DAMASCUS: The worst drought in decades is gripping much of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, drying out rivers and lakes, shriveling crops and leading to dayslong tap water cutoffs in major cities.
The situation is particularly dire in Syria, where experts say rainfall has been declining for decades and where the fledgling government is trying to stitch the country back together following a 14-year civil war that left millions impoverished and reliant on foreign aid.
Small-farmer Mansour Mahmoud Al-Khatib said that during the war, he couldn’t reach his fields in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab some days because militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah militia allied with then-President Bashar Assad would block the roads. That problem vanished when Hezbollah withdrew after Assad fell in a December rebel offensive, but the drought has devastated his farm, drying up the wells that irrigate it.
“The land is missing the water,” Al-Khatib told The Associated Press recently as he watched workers feed the wheat he did manage to harvest into a threshing machine. “This season is weak — you could call it half a season. Some years are better and some years are worse, but this year is harsh.”
In a good year, his land could produce as much as 800 to 900 kilograms (1,764 to 1,984 pounds) of wheat per dunam, an area equal to 0.1 hectares and 0.25 acres. This year, it yielded about a quarter that much, he said. He hired only six or seven workers this harvest season instead of last year’s 15.
Syria’s withering crops
Because the drought followed a prolonged war, farmers who were already financially stretched have had little ability to cope with its effects, said Jalal Al Hamoud, national food security officer for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Syria.
Before the uprising-turned-civil war that began in 2011, Syrian farmers produced an average of 3.5 million to 4.5 million tons of wheat per year, which was enough to meet the country’s domestic needs, according to Saeed Ibrahim, director of agricultural planning and economics in Syria’s Agriculture Ministry.
That annual yield dropped to 2.2 million to 2.6 million tons during the war, and in recent years, the government has had to import 60 percent to 70 percent of its wheat to feed its roughly 23 million people. This year’s harvest is expected to yield only 1 million tons, forcing the country to spend even more of its strained resources on imports.
Mudar Dayoub, a spokesperson for Syria’s Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection, said this year’s wheat crop will only last for two or three months and that the government is “currently relying on signing contracts to import wheat from abroad” and on donations, including from neighboring Iraq.
But in a country where the World Food Program estimates that half the population is food-insecure, Ibrahim warned that “total reliance on imports and aid threatens food security” and is “unsustainable.”
The drought isn’t the only major issue facing Syria, where postwar reconstruction is projected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Since Assad fled, the country has been rattled by outbreaks of sectarian violence, and there’s growing doubt about whether the new authorities will be able to hold it together. Without jobs or stability, millions of refugees who fled during the war are unlikely to come home.
Interconnected crises
A dam on the Litani River in neighboring Lebanon’s fertile Bekaa Valley forms Lake Qaraoun, a reservoir that spans about 12 square kilometers (4.6 square miles).
Over the years, climate change has led to a gradual decline in the water flowing into the reservoir, said Sami Alawieh, head of the Litani River National Authority.
This summer, after an unusually dry winter left Lebanon without the water reserves its usually banks through snow and rainfall, it has shrunk to the size of a pond, surrounded by a vast expanse of parched land.
Although an average of 350 million cubic meters (12.4 billion cubic feet) of water flows into the lake during the rainy season each year, meeting about one-third of Lebanon’s annual demand, this year the incoming water didn’t exceed 45 million cubic meters (1.6 billion cubic feet), he said.
Lebanon’s water woes have further exacerbated the drought in Syria, which partially relies on rivers flowing in from its western neighbor.
The largest of those is the Orontes, also known as the Assi. In Syria’s Idlib province, the river is an important source of irrigation water, and fishermen make their living from its banks. This year, dead fish littered the dried-out river bed.
“This is the first time it’s happened that there was no water at all,” said Dureid Hajj Salah, a farmer in Idlib’s Jisour Al-Shugour. Many farmers can’t afford to dig wells for irrigation, and the drought destroyed not only summer vegetable crops but decades-old trees in orchards, he said.
“There is no compensation for the loss of crops,” Hajj Salah said. “And you know the farmers make just enough to get by.”
Mostafa Summaq, director of water resources in Idlib province, said the groundwater dropped by more than 10 meters (33 feet) in three months in some monitoring wells, which he attributed to farmers overpumping due to a lack of rain. Local officials are considering installing metered irrigation systems, but it would be too expensive to do without assistance, he said.
A drier climate
Most experts agree that Syria and the broader region appear headed toward worse climate shocks, which they aren’t prepared to absorb.
Climate change makes some regions wetter and others drier, and the Middle East and Mediterranean are among those that are drying out, said Matti Kummu, a professor at Aalto University in Finland who specializes in global food and water issues. Syria, specifically, has shown a trend of reduced rainfall over the past 40 years, while it has been using water at an unsustainable rate.
“There’s not enough water from rainfall or from snowmelt in the mountains to recharge the groundwater,” Kummu said. Due to increasing irrigation needs, he said, “the groundwater table is going lower and lower, which means that it’s less accessible and requires more energy (to pump).” At some point, the groundwater might run out.
Even with limited means, the country could take measures to mitigate the impacts, such as increased rainwater harvesting, switching to more drought-tolerant crops and trying to put more effective irrigation systems in place, even simple ones.
But “in the long term, if the situation in terms of the climate change impacts continues” as currently projected, how much of the croplands will be arable in the coming decades is an open question, Kummu said.
The worst drought in decades is threatening Syria’s fragile recovery from years of civil war
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The worst drought in decades is threatening Syria’s fragile recovery from years of civil war
- Because the drought followed a prolonged war, farmers who were already financially stretched have had little ability to cope with its effects, said Jalal Al Hamoud, national food security officer for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Syria
- That annual yield dropped to 2.2 million to 2.6 million tons during the war, and in recent years, the government has had to import 60 percent to 70 percent of its wheat to feed its roughly 23 million people
Israeli military raids in Syria raise tensions as they carve out a buffer zone
- Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel
- Damascus has struggled to push Israel diplomatically to stop its attacks and pull its troops out of a formerly United Nations-patrolled buffer zone
BEIRUT: Qassim Hamadeh woke to the sounds of gunfire and explosions in his village of Beit Jin in southwestern Syria last month. Within hours, he had lost two sons, a daughter-in-law and his 4-year-old and 10-year-old grandsons. The five were among 13 villagers killed that day by Israeli forces.
Israeli troops had raided the village — not for the first time — seeking to capture, as they said, members of a militant group planning attacks into Israel. Israel said militants opened fire at the troops, wounding six, and that troops returned fire and brought in air support.
Hamadeh, like others in Beit Jin, dismissed Israel’s claims of militants operating in the village. The residents said armed villagers confronted Israeli soldiers they saw as invaders, only to be met with Israeli tank and artillery fire, followed by a drone strike. The government in Damascus called it a “massacre.”
The raid and similar recent Israeli actions inside Syria have increased tensions, frustrated locals and also scuttled chances — despite US pressure — of any imminent thaw in relations between the two neighbors.
An expanding Israeli presence
An Israeli-Syria rapprochement seemed possible last December, after Sunni Islamist-led rebels overthrew autocratic Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran, Israel’s archenemy.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel. But Israel was suspicious, mistrusting Al-Sharaa because of his militant past and his group’s history of aligning with Al-Qaeda.
Israeli forces quickly moved to impose a new reality on the ground. They mobilized into the UN-mandated buffer zone in southern Syria next to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Israeli forces erected checkpoints and military installations, including on a hilltop that overlooks wide swaths of Syria. They set up landing pads on strategic Mt. Hermon nearby. Israeli reconnaissance drones frequently fly over surrounding Syrian towns, with residents often sighting Israeli tanks and Humvee vehicles patrolling those areas.
Israel has said its presence is temporary to clear out pro-Assad remnants and militants — to protect Israel from attacks. But it has given no indication its forces would leave anytime soon. Talks between the two countries to reach a security agreement have so far yielded no result.
Ghosts of Lebanon and Gaza
The events in neighboring Lebanon, which shares a border with both Israel and Syria, and the two-year war in Gaza between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas have also raised concerns among Syrians that Israel plans a permanent land grab in southern Syria.
Israeli forces still have a presence in southern Lebanon, over a year since a US-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. That war began a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon, which included bombardment across the tiny country and a ground incursion last year, have severely weakened Hezbollah.
Today, Israel still controls five hilltop points in southern Lebanon, launches near-daily airstrikes against alleged Hezbollah targets and flies reconnaissance drones over the country, sometimes also carrying out overnight ground incursions.
In Gaza, where US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire deal has brought about a truce between Israel and Hamas, similar buffer zones under Israeli control are planned even after Israel eventually withdraws from the more than half of the territory it still controls.
At a meeting of regional leaders and international figures earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, Al-Sharaa accused Israel of using imagined threats to justify aggressive actions.
“All countries support an Israeli withdrawal” from Syria to the lines prior to Assad’s ouster, he said, adding that it was the only way for both Syria and Israel to “emerge in a state of safety.”
Syria’s myriad problems
The new leadership in Damascus has had a multitude of challenges since ousting Assad.
Al-Sharaa’s government has been unable to implement a deal with local Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria, and large areas of southern Sweida province are now under a de facto administration led by the Druze religious minority, following sectarian clashes there in mid-July with local Bedouin clans.
Syrian government forces intervened, effectively siding with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights.
Israel, which has cast itself as a defender of the Druze, though many of them in Syria are critical of its intentions, has also made overtures to Kurds in Syria.
“The Israelis here are pursuing a very dangerous strategy,” said Michael Young, Senior Editor at the Beirut-based Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
It contradicts, he added, the positions of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt — and even the United States — which are “all in agreement that what has to come out of this today is a Syrian state that is unified and fairly strong,” he added.
Israel and the US at odds over Syria
In a video released from his office after visiting Israeli troops wounded in Beit Jin, barely 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the edge of the UN buffer zone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel seeks a “demilitarized buffer zone from Damascus to the (UN) buffer zone,” including Mt. Hermon.
“It is also possible to reach an agreement with the Syrians, but we will stand by our principles in any case,” Netanyahu said.
His strategy has proven to be largely unpopular with the international community, including with Washington, which has backed Al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate his control across Syria.
Israel’s operations in southern Syria have drawn rare public criticism from Trump, who has taken Al-Sharaa, once on Washington’s terror list, under his wing.
“It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social after the Beit Jin clashes.
Syria is also expected to be on the agenda when Netanyahu visits the US and meets with Trump later this month.
Experts doubt Israel will withdraw from Syria anytime soon — and the new government in Damascus has little leverage or power against Israel’s much stronger military.
“If you set up landing pads, then you are not here for short-term,” Issam Al-Reiss, a military adviser with the Syrian research group ETANA, said of Israeli actions.
Hamadeh, the laborer from Beit Jin, said he can “no longer bear the situation” after losing five of his family.
Israel, he said, “strikes wherever it wants, it destroys whatever it wants, and kills whoever it wants, and no one holds it accountable.”
