Drought, Democracy and Disaster in Syria

52 Pages·2017·1.11 MB·English

by  Aidan Snyder

Drought, Democracy and Disaster in Syria
2017 Senior Thesis
Aidan Snyder
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the effects of water scarcity on the Syrian Civil War.
Ultimately it will become clear that, although the Arab Spring provided a spark
for the conflict, water scarcity was responsible for putting the nation on the path
that resulted in revolution. Climactic, population, and economic data all serve to
support the argument. An extended period of drought led to extreme water
scarcity, and ultimately a collapse of the nation’s agricultural industry. This
resulted in widespread migration of the population from rural to urban areas,
and ultimately widespread discontent that facilitated the nation’s descent into
Civil War.
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 3
2. EXISTING EXPLANATIONS 7
2.1 ETHNO-RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND MINORITY RULE 7
2.2 ECONOMIC PRESSURES AND GETTING ON THE RIGHT TRACK 12
3. DESPERATE REVOLUTIONS IN A CHANGING WORLD 15
4. SYRIA’S WATER WAR 19
4.1 AGRICULTURAL BOOM 20
4.2 THE REPEATED SYRIAN DROUGHTS 24
4.3 AGRICULTURAL COLLAPSE 28
4.4 MASS INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT 31
4.5 SYRIA’S PATH TO CIVIL WAR 33
5. THE DROUGHT ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST 36
5.1 THE CASE OF JORDAN 38
5.2 THE TURKISH QUESTION 41
6. CONCLUSION AND LOOKING FORWARD 44
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 47
8. WORKS CITED 48
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Aidan Snyder
Paulina Ochoa Espejo – Advisor

1. Introduction
Since the Arab Spring of March 2011 Syria has been embroiled in a bitter civil war,
pitting government forces against rebel militias and the Islamic State (also known as
Daesh, ISIS, and ISIL)[CNN Library, 2016]. Conventional wisdom, and the majority of
research, indicates that this Civil War is the result of ideological and religious clashes as
the population seeks to dethrone Bashar al-Assad and establish democracy [Hof, FAO,
Jenkins, Bellin, Fearon, Lynch, Rich, Cederman et al]. This explanation for the conflict is
echoed through the majority of the scholarship about the Syrian Civil War, and alternative
explanations largely explain the conflict as the result of economic grievances perpetuated
by the corruption present in the Assad regime [Wimmen, 2016][Haddad, 2012]. Both of
these explanations focus on economic and political causes of the conflict, and they provide
valuable knowledge about how the nation descended into Civil War. Despite the valuable
insight these explanations provide they continue to miss one of the most important
causes of the conflict.
Given the relatively stable nature of Syria until the Arab Spring, it is easy to
attribute the conflict to the majority of a population pushing against minority rule. In
2007 an article published by the American Political Science Journal, “Ethnic Minority Rule
and Civil War Onset,” indicated that nations with minority leaders were 2.75 times more
likely to experience civil war each year that the minority ruler stayed in power [Fearon et
al, 2007]. This type of research displays that there is a tendency in Political Science to
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attribute conflicts to familiar and historically studied factors. Lars-Erik Cederman
published a 2015 book, “Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War,” that discusses the
historical causes of civil wars and water is not mentioned as one of the possible causes
[Cederman et al, 2015]. It is within this realm of political science that much of the existing
research exists, and as a result there has been a gap in research about the important
causes of the Syrian conflict, namely water scarcity.
The area where Syria is today has been populated for over 5,000 years, which was
made possible by the invention of water irrigation technologies to permit agricultural
production in the extremely arid region. Irrigation permitted these early civilizations to
flourish, and the area came to be known as the Fertile Crescent. Water has remained the
most important resource for this arid nation, and the first historical example of a water
war in Syria happened almost 2,500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. In this war the
kingdoms of Lagash and Umma went to war as a result of conflict over an irrigation canal
from the Euphrates River [Hammer, 2013]. The conflict today has little in common with
the water wars of thousands of years ago, but the importance of water in the region
cannot be exaggerated and the influence of water scarcity on the Syrian state needs to be
explored.
In recent history there has been a precedent for war over limited water resources
around the world, and the issue is only magnified in the extremely arid Middle East. As
recently as 1990 Syria threatened neighboring Turkey with military action over the
construction of damn on the Euphrates River, a conflict that eventually led to the signing
of a treaty concerning water usage between the two nations [Gleick, 2008]. In Sudan,
students opposing the construction of the Jonglei Canal were killed during protests, the
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population responded with violence that halted the construction of the canal [Gleick,
2008]. In this Sudanese example it is accurate to say that the construction of the canal led
to the violent protests because of the clear chain of causation, a chain that has not been
fully explored in the Syrian conflict. In 1979 Anwar Sadat was quoted as saying that the
“only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” Although these examples do not
prove that the Syrian conflict was caused by water scarcity, they show a trend indicating
the important role that water can play in conflict. Why, however, is it important to
understand the influence of water scarcity on conflicts? If the conventional scholarship is
only missing one of the multitudes of factors that caused the Syrian Civil War is it really
even a big deal?
The issue of water scarcity is becoming increasingly important as time progresses
and the world changes. Since the mid 1990’s scientists have been evaluating the
possibility that climate change will cause increased drought and desertification in semi
arid to arid regions [Le Houérou, 1996]. Evidence shows that these areas are far more
susceptible to the drying impacts of climate change than other areas around the world.
The entirety of Syria is described as semi arid or drier, putting it at an extreme risk for
desertification and drought [Le Houérou, 1996]. Unless major steps are taken in the
future to reduce the impacts of climate change then this is a process that may repeat itself
around the world. As a result research into the effects water scarcity is having on nations
around the world is becoming and will continue to become more important to the
academic and international communities.
Climactic changes in the region led to a decrease in the amount of stored water,
resulting in a failure of the agricultural industry that had grown dependent upon
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groundwater reserves to satisfy irrigation needs. There was mass internal displacement,
as a direct result of water scarcity, which led to widespread discontent with the regime
and desperation among the population. This economic collapse, caused by water scarcity,
is what drove the Syrian population to the streets, and put the nation on a path that has
led to a continuing Civil War. Once a full examination of Syria is complete it becomes clear
that by the time the ideals of the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, providing a
spark, the Syrian state was already on the path to Civil War as a direct result of water
scarcity.
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2. Existing Explanations
2.1 Ethno-Religious Conflict and Minority Rule
By comparing the Syrian situation to neighboring countries with more responsible
water policies, and examining how the drought affected the stability of the Syrian state,
this paper will show that there is a direct connection between water scarcity and Syria’s
current Civil War. Before the question of how water scarcity impacted the stability of
Syria can be explored it is vital to discover why the existing explanations for the Syrian
conflict are coming up short, and missing the most important cause of the war.
1 Most of the academic literature about the
Syrian Civil War is focused on the conflict as the
result of democratization or ethno religious
conflict [Hof, Lawson, Fearon, Cederman,
Jenkins, Bellin]. Any understanding of this
argument requires knowledge of Syria’s
demographics. The ruling sect, the Alawites, is a
Figure 1: Syrian Demographics
minority that makes up only 12% of the
population, but it controls virtually the entire government [Library of Congress, 2005].
The Alawites are a specific sect of Shia Islam, which has dominated the majority Sunni
(74%) population for almost 50 years [Library of Congress, 2005]. Before the Civil War
10% of the population was Christian, with the remaining 4% made up by Druze, Judaism,
or various other religions [Library of Congress, 2005]. Ethnically, 90 % of the population

1 Figure taken from: US State Department. 2012. Web.
https://sperglord.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/syrian-demographics-updated.png
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is Arab, while 9% are Kurds, who are concentrated in rural Northeastern Syria [Library of
Congress, 2005]. On the surface this diverse mix of religions and ethnicities seems to be a
reasonable explanation for the recent conflict, and one that fits well within the existing
realm of political science research [Fearon et al, 2007]. This has resulted in researchers
focusing on the ethnic and religious aspects of the conflict rather than the environmental
factors that drove the population to desperation.
Researchers, including Frederic Hof and Eva Bellin, among others, believe that the
Civil war was caused by protests for reform and the Assad regime’s violent crackdown on
what began as peaceful protests [Hof, 2013]. This ignores the fact that not all countries
affected by the Arab Spring went on to engage in Civil War, so even if the Arab Spring
provided the spark there must have been another factor driving the population to the
point of revolution. In this kind of discussion of the Syrian Civil War, the importance of the
ethnic divides in the country cannot be overstated. Hof focuses on how the majority of the
protesters in Syria’s streets were of the majority religion, Sunni Islam, while the regime
consisted primarily of the minority Alawite sect [Hof, 2013]. This sentiment is echoed by
many of his peers, but ignores the fact that the protests were not entirely occurring along
sectarian lines [Bhardwaj, 2012][Bellin, 2012]. Furthermore, James Fearon, of Stanford
University, attributes the conflict to ethnic minority rule, but acknowledges that the Civil
War would likely continue even if all Alawites were to disappear from the conflict because
of the fragmentation of the nation’s Sunni population [Fearon, 2013]. Given that Fearon is
one of the strongest proponents of revolutions as a result of minority rule, it is
enlightening that he acknowledges that the conflict would continue even without the
minority population in power [Fearon et al. 2007][Fearon, 2013]. Beyond the ethnic
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explanation there could have been other factors that were inordinately effecting the rural
Sunni population, such as water scarcity, that drove the population into the streets and
could result in the ethnic differences being identified as the causal factor of the conflict.
Questions remain about whether or not the protesters in the streets were pushed there
due to ethnic differences rather than environmental factors, and more digging is
necessary to determine what was more influential.
The gap in the research would not be that important, except the argument that
ethnic differences and democratization caused the Syrian Civil War falls short in
explaining why the Syrian population was pushed to the edge of the war. The majority of
Alawites and others in Damascus and the nation’s other western cities have remained
loyal to the regime, and this is used as evidence to describe the conflict as an ethno-
religious one [Hof, 2015]. Superficially this makes a lot of sense, but it ignores the fact that
this Alawite population was not the group of Syrians who were most acutely affected by
the drought and that not all Alawites continued to support the regime [Fiorillo et al,
2003][Hinnebusch, 2012]. The Alawite population has, in Syria’s recent history, been the
nation’s urban elite and thus insulated from the negative environmental affects that
resulted from the drought and water scarcity. As a result they were not pushed to the
same point of desperation as the rest of the population, and did not have the same amount
of incentive to rebel against the regime. The Alawite population’s loyalty to the regime
can be explained as more than just an ethnic issue, and could have similarly been caused
by their insulation from the effects of water scarcity.
Additionally the Alawite population is not the only part of the Syrian population
who has continued to support the regime throughout the conflict, large portions of the
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Sunni Arab population have emigrated to government controlled areas of the nation and
pledged their allegiance to the regime [Wimmen, 2016]. Furthermore influential Alawites,
including actress Fadwa Suleiman and writer Samar Yazbek, supported the revolution
and were widely admired by protesters [Wimmen, 2016]. In the city of Homs, dubbed the
“Heart of the Revolution”, Alawite activists stood alongside Christian and Sunni
populations to declare their support for the revolution, indicating that the revolution was
the result of grievances that went beyond ethnic conflict [Wimmen, 2016]. Although not
all Alawites were supportive of the revolution, there is a portion of this minority
population that lost faith in the government and took to the streets in protest. Logically, if
the war has been caused by ethnic or religious origins these two contradictory sects of
Islam would be in opposition to one another rather than protesting side by side.
Another challenge to the ethnically based scholarship on the Syrian Civil War
arises during the exploration of Syria’s Kurdish community. Historically Kurdish and Arab
relations in Syria have been sour, at best. However, during the recent Civil War many
Sunni Arab militias have aligned themselves with the Kurdish armed forces in the region
[Wintour, 2016][Al-Khalidi et al, 2015]. The Democratic Forces of Syria, as they are
known, is an alliance between the Kurdish YPG forces and the Arab rebel groups known
as the Syrian Arab Coalition [Al-Khalidi et al, 2015]. This alliance, along with other
inconsistencies in the ethnic and religious lines of the conflict, creates enough doubt in
this explanation for the conflict that it is necessary to evaluate alternatives.
A good historical comparison, for the argument that the Arab Spring caused the
Syrian Civil War, is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the cause of World
War I. In that case many reference the June 1914 assassination of the heir to the Austro-