Water crisis floats Syrian
unrest By Victor Kotsev
TEL AVIV - A month after Vogue magazine
called Syria's first lady Asma Assad "a rose in
the desert" in a puff piece that portrayed the
Assads as obsessively concerned with both family
democracy and the "active citizenship" of Syrian
youth, [1] the Syrian regime was busy shooting
active citizens. The danger to President Bashar
al-Assad's rule is arguably smaller than that in
Egypt or Libya - not least because the United
States, represented by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, promised solemnly not to interfere.
Yet, the wave of uprisings in the Arab
world clearly did not bypass "the safest country
in the Middle East" (to borrow another expression
from the Vogue story). The mixture of reasons is
roughly the same as elsewhere
(poverty and political oppression), but there is a
peculiar twist that bodes much worse to come in
the long run - Syria faces an unprecedented water
crisis, compounded by poor agricultural
infrastructure and management. There is a twist
also to the geopolitical ramifications of what is
happening - if it develops much further, the
unrest could theoretically destabilize the entire
region in a more profound way than any other
regional crisis.
Amnesty International
claims that at least 55 demonstrators were killed
in the city of Daraa through Friday (other reports
claim more than 60) , and refers to "unconfirmed
reports" of 37 deaths throughout the country over
the weekend. Available information is patchy and
it is likely that more deaths will come to light.
Meanwhile, Assad sent in the army to
another city that has witnessed protests - Latakia
- and announced plans for seemingly broad reforms
such as lifting a four-decade emergency rule and
political liberalization. The protesters rejected
the announcement, and the president, who has so
far remained silent during the crisis, is expected
to deliver an "important" address any time now.
The regime has attempted to blame the
United States and Israel for organizing the
unrest, but this argument is unlikely to persuade
anybody except Assad's ardent supporters. It is
hard to avoid the fact that the region of Daraa,
where the current round of protests started, is
one of the poorest in Syria. According to a recent
Jerusalem Post report, "The city is home to
thousands of displaced people from eastern Syria,
where up to a million people have left their homes
because of a water crisis over the past six
years."
Indeed, several analysts have
picked up on the economic roots of the crisis.
Shortly before the unrest, American-based Syrian
dissident Farid Ghadry offered a unique
perspective that drew parallels to the situation
in Egypt and simultaneously challenged Vogue's
depiction of the work of Syria's first lady: "The
coming Syrian revolution will be led by two
million young Syrian women unable to find
economically independent husbands and forced to
embrace celibacy (Ansa'a) because of
rampant unemployment and economic deprivation ...
They will be an essential component in the coming
revolution and this is why Asma al-Assad chairs a
women's organization in Syria whose real purpose
is to gauge their anger."
More recently, Asia Times
Online's David Goldman tied the crisis to a spike
in food prices in an insightful article titled Food
and Syria's failure (Asia Times Online, March
28, 2011):
The Arab bazaar speculates in
foodstuffs as aggressively as hedge funds, and
the Syrian government's attempt last month to
keep food prices down prompted local merchants
to hoard commodities with a long shelf life.
Fruit and vegetable prices, by contrast, remain
low, because the bazaar does not hoard
perishables. The fact that prices rose after the
government announced high-profile measures to
prevent such a rise exposed the fecklessness of
the Assad regime.
Some media,
including Reuters, The New York Times and The
Jerusalem Post, have also mentioned the drought of
the past few years that compounded the economic
situation in Syria considerably. However, the
water crisis in the country predates the current
cycle of drought, and as a whole has not received
sufficient attention by the media and by analysts.
Water, in fact, has been a major factor in
all of Syria's conflicts, going back to the 1967
war with Israel (the Golan Heights, which Israel
captured in the war, contain an important
aquifer). A long-standing enmity with Turkey,
which was resolved in incremental steps over the
past few years, [2] also revolved around water.
When, in the late 1980s, Turkey started
work on the massive Southeastern Anatolia Project
(GAP in Turkish), designed to utilize the waters
of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers for development
projects, both Syria and Iraq, downstream on the
rivers, cried foul that the Turks were stealing
their water. The project was slowed greatly by
Kurdish terror attacks at a time when Syria
supported actively the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), and it is reasonable to assume a link
between the two.
The loss of aquifers such
as the Golan Heights and the depletion of the
Euphrates and Tigris piled on top of poor
development planning, rapid population growth and
unfavorable weather conditions (several prolonged
periods of drought) combined to produce what the
United Nations has termed the "largest internal
displacement in the Middle East in recent years".
In the 1970s and 1980s, the government of
Bashar Assad's father Hafez neglected the
development of the traditionally strong
agriculture sector in favor of oil exports and
industrialization (as well as an arms race with
Israel). As a result, most of Syria's farmland is
still irrigated by an outdated method of flooding
that wastes a great deal of water in comparison
with more modern techniques such as drip
irrigation.
The government also failed to
formulate a coherent policy to curb pollution and
to regulate private digging of wells. According to
a September, 2000, report by the Israel-based
Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies:
Half of the country's 160,000 wells
have been dug illegally, resulting in the drop
of well-water levels and dried-up rivers and
springs. As a result, major Syrian urban centers
(including Damascus and Aleppo) have been forced
to institute harsh water rationing in recent
years. Residents of Damascus endure as much as
thirteen hours a day without water. In rural
areas water is rationed four days a week. This
situation is only expected to worsen; the Syrian
population is expanding rapidly, and domestic
water requirements are expected to double in
less than two decades. [3]
Ten years
following the report, the disastrous consequences
of the neglect are tangible. Harvest yields are
decreasing by the year, and, in the words of a
2009 United Nations report, the diet of countless
farmers consists "of bread and sugared tea".
In the wake of the uprisings elsewhere in
the Arab world, the social discontent was
channeled into the current wave of protests
against Assad. Still, the threat that the Syrian
regime faces for now appears lesser than that to
other regimes in the region. "The army is sticking
by the president, a main difference with Egypt or
Tunisia," Joshua Landis, a prominent American
expert with strong connections to Syria, writes in
his blog. "So long as the army remains united and
obeys the president, it will be hard for the
opposition to take over parts of the country or
bring down the regime."
Another crucial
difference is that practically all major
international players, including traditional
enemies such as Israel, have reasons to hope that
Assad clings to power. The fact that the Syrian
president sits on top of a massive medium-range
missile arsenal, including a large number of
chemical warheads, alone explains why stability in
the country is of utmost importance.
More
prosaic reasons also abound, and vary for each
country. Israel is afraid of the presumably more
radical Sunni Muslim Brotherhood taking over,
should the Alawite Assad be overthrown. To quote
Israeli journalist Yaakov Katz, "For all his
faults, Assad is the devil we know."
Turkey is eyeing nervously Syria's Kurdish
population. Just like in Iraq, it has little
interest to see an autonomous Kurdish entity
emerge on its borders in a hypothetical scenario
that includes the breakup of Syria.
One
analyst speculated that the recent lull of
anti-Israeli rhetoric coming out of Turkey's Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was partially the
consequence of shared concerns over Syria.
In turn, Iran is an old ally of Assad, as
are two BRIC members, Russia and China.
The danger of Lebanon being destabilized
can also be a potential unifying factor for an
impressively diverse group of countries. Syria has
reportedly reined in Hezbollah on several
occasions in recent years. "Washington, Israel,
Turkey and Iran all have great reasons to want
Assad to remain at the helm," Israeli analyst Zvi
Bar'el writes in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. "He's
seen as a safety valve against an attack by
Hezbollah on Israel or against its physical
takeover of Lebanon."
In his almost 11
years in power, Assad has demonstrated that he can
be every bit as ruthless as his father, Hafez, who
in 1982 killed tens of thousands of people in
order to quell unrest in the city of Hama. If the
younger Assad follows in his father's footsteps,
he will likely encounter severe criticism from the
international community, but not much else.
Thus, at least until his army deserts him
(which is still a possibility, particularly since
most of the soldiers are Sunni Muslims, while the
regime comes from a religious minority), he is
indeed safe. He may not even need to go all the
way, since the opposition is well aware of the
situation, and is hardly suicidal.
However, even if he survives, without
addressing the underlying issues that led to the
crisis, Assad would jeopardize the long-term
stability of both his regime and his country.
Damage to the aquifer, in particular, with time
becomes irreversible, and could trigger a vicious
cycle of environmental developments that could
ruin what is left of Syrian agriculture.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
