{"id":356,"date":"2014-05-26T07:18:02","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/?p=356"},"modified":"2014-06-04T07:25:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T06:25:48","slug":"samir-aita-the-failure-of-the-government-to-respond-to-the-drought-played-a-huge-role-in-fueling-the-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/samir-aita-the-failure-of-the-government-to-respond-to-the-drought-played-a-huge-role-in-fueling-the-uprising\/","title":{"rendered":"Samir AITA: The failure of the government to respond to the drought played a huge role in fueling the uprising."},"content":{"rendered":"

In Climateprogress, by Joe Romm<\/span><\/p>\n

Syria Today Is A Preview Of Memorial Day, 2030<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, Friedman described how warming-worsened drought has exacerbated political instability even now in Syria. His piece \u201c<\/span>Without Water, Revolution<\/a>\u201d explained:<\/span><\/p>\n

This Syrian disaster is like a superstorm. It\u2019s what happens when an extreme weather event, the worst drought in Syria\u2019s modern history, combines with a fast-growing population and a repressive and corrupt regime and unleashes extreme sectarian and religious passions, fueled by money from rival outside powers \u2014 Iran and Hezbollah on one side, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar on the other, each of which have an extreme interest in its Syrian allies\u2019 defeating the other\u2019s allies \u2014 all at a time when America, in its post-Iraq\/Afghanistan phase, is extremely wary of getting involved.<\/p>\n

I came here to write my column and work on a film for the Showtime series,\u00a0\u201cYears of Living Dangerously,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0about the \u201cJafaf,\u201d or drought, one of the key drivers of the Syrian war. In an age of climate change, we\u2019re likely to see many more such conflicts.<\/p>\n

Warming-worsened drought is causing problems all around the Mediterranean:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But, obviously, the poorer a country is \u2014 and the worse it is governed \u2014 the more warming-worsened drought is likely to drive instability:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe drought did not cause Syria\u2019s civil war,\u201d said the Syrian economist Samir Aita, but, he added, the failure of the government to respond to the drought played a huge role in fueling the uprising. What happened, Aita explained, was that after Assad took over in 2000 he opened up the regulated agricultural sector in Syria for big farmers, many of them government cronies, to buy up land and drill as much water as they wanted, eventually severely diminishing the water table. This began driving small farmers off the land into towns, where they had to scrounge for work\u2026.<\/p>\n

Then, between 2006 and 2011, some 60 percent of Syria\u2019s land mass was ravaged by the drought and, with the water table already too low and river irrigation shrunken, it wiped out the livelihoods of 800,000 Syrian farmers and herders, the United Nations reported. \u201cHalf the population in Syria between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers left the land\u201d for urban areas during the last decade, said Aita. And with Assad doing nothing to help the drought refugees, a lot of very simple farmers and their kids got politicized. \u201cState and government was invented in this part of the world, in ancient Mesopotamia, precisely to manage irrigation and crop growing,\u201d said Aita, \u201cand Assad failed in that basic task.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young people and farmers starved for jobs \u2014 and land starved for water \u2014 were a prescription for revolution.<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n\r\n\t\t

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Climateprogress, by Joe Romm Syria Today Is A Preview Of Memorial Day, 2030 Last year, Friedman described how warming-worsened drought has exacerbated political instability even now in Syria. His piece \u201cWithout Water, Revolution\u201d explained: This Syrian disaster is likeRead more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activites-recentes","category-non-classe","post_format-post-format-chat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.economistes-arabes.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}