Assad Regime’s Drought Response Triggered Syrian War

[unhappycamper]

http://ens-newswire.com/2014/02/28/assad-regimes-drought-response-triggered-syrian-war/



Camel in the Syrian drought, Oct. 2009

Assad Regime’s Drought Response Triggered Syrian War
Posted by News Editor in Latest News, RSS, Water on February 28, 2014 1:26 pm

NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands, February 28, 2014 (ENS) – The long drought that gripped Syria from 2006 through 2010 was a trigger of the conflict that has torn the country apart with devastating consequences, finds new research from a Dutch scientist.

Writing in the current issue of the journal “Middle Eastern Studies,” Francesca de Châtel of Radboud University in the Netherlands explains that “it was not the drought per se, but rather the government’s failure to respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis that formed one of the triggers of the uprising, feeding a discontent that had long been simmering in rural areas.”

The drought hit hardest in the northeast, the most impoverished and neglected part of the country, which was also the country’s breadbasket and source of oil, explains de Châtel.

“Since 2000, this region has been rapidly sinking further into poverty as groundwater reserves were depleted and a series of overambitious agricultural development projects overstretched both land and water resources. The drought that struck in 2006 merely formed a final coup de grace,” she writes.

[bemildred]

1. It always starts with food riots.

Usually when the stupid politicians decide they might need some of those people, so they give them some food. And the starvees generally decide they got nothing to lose, so they head for the streets. Food is a weapon, but as with all weapons, it can get out of hand.