Mass Starvation And Internal Displacement In Syria

International News

Written by Samuel Sokol

Thursday, 15 April 2010 11:43

Hundreds of thousands of people living in the North-Eastern Syrian governorates of Al-Hassake, Dayr az Zawr, and Ar-Raqqa have been brought close to starvation, according to a February report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Three consecutive years of drought, coupled with mismanagement of natural resources and allegedly irresponsible agricultural policies have affected over 1.3 million residents of these northern provinces.

The United Nations claims that up to 80% of those affected live mostly on a diet of bread and sugared tea and that children have been reduced to eating two meals a day. Milk for children is reportedly unavailable.

The strain of feeding their families has led many former agricultural workers in Syriaâ€™s north-eastern dustbowl to migrate to the larger cities, where work is already scarce due to a prior influx of a million refugees fleeing the American occupation of Iraq.

There are three major contributing factors to the humanitarian crisis in Syria says Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan Universityâ€™s Begin-Sadat Center (BESA).

There has been a general decline in rainfall over the last five years throughout the region. Syria, with an expanding population and rising industrial requirements, has been required to do more with less, decimating the nationâ€™s agriculture.

Furthermore, Turkey has recently begun exploiting increasing amounts of water from the Euphrates River before it enters Syrian territory, eating away at a major source of water for local agriculture. As the water level dips in the Assad Lake as a result of the Turkish exploitation of the river that feeds into it, many of the farms that previously relied on this source for irrigation have dried up and ceased being productive. Many of the people living in the affected regions have consequently moved to the fringes of major cities, to neighborhoods with little or none of the infrastructure necessary to maintain a proper quality of life.

The above-mentioned problems are exacerbated by local corruption and shortcomings in infrastructure planning.

In Zayzoun village most of the local communityâ€™s water was lost when the dam blocking the local wadi collapsed, killing dozens of local residents. When the damâ€™s remains were later inspected, it was discovered that instead of ferro-concrete, concrete reinforced with iron bars to enhance structural integrity, the government inspector had allowed the building contractor to substitute non-reinforced, standard concrete.

Writing in the Israeli news website Ynet, Guy Bechor, a lecturer on Arab law at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilyya, added that another contributing factor to the worsening situation in Syria is the Assad regimeâ€™s â€œillogical policy of forced agriculture in the east of the country that included forcing residents to grow water-hungry corps such as cotton and wheat.â€

According to Bechor â€œthis prompted water wells to dry up completely and led to deep hunger.â€

The exact number of refugees is disputed, with the United Nations stating that since early 2009, 65,000 families have left their villages, while Dr. Bechor claims that â€œmore than 300,000 Syrian families have been uprooted by authorities.â€

Dr. Kedar commented that he was not familiar with any plans for a forced uprooting of Syriaâ€™s Arab citizens, but that it was not beyond reason that such an action could be undertaken against the countryâ€™s Kurdish minority. However, he stressed, no indications of this have been seen.

Bechor noted that Syriaâ€™s predicament throws into sharp relief the reasons for its desire to exert sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

He noted that Syria previous transferred â€one million Syrian citizens to Lebanon in order to take over its economyâ€ in establishing its occupation of that country, and theorized that Syria wants control over Israelâ€™s north-eastern territory in order to use it as a springboard to take control over the water resources of Israelâ€™s lake of Galilee (Kinneret).

â€œBashar Assad dreams of filling the Golan with one million Syrians,â€ wrote Bechor, â€œand then northern Israel will be in his hands; when he wishes to do so, he will prompt â€œresistanceâ€ and then roll his eyes to the heavens and declare that he doesnâ€™t know who did it.â€

According to Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli career diplomat and a consultant on US-Israel relations, â€œSyrian control of the Golan watershedâ€”located on the present cease fire line along the eastern Golan Heights mountain ridgeâ€”would pollute the Kinneret waters and make it easy to divert its water sources,â€ and would cost Israel control over 30% of its current water resources.

Earlier this year, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Assad that any aggression against Israel would lead to the toppling of his regime.