No Water Brought the Spring to Syria

New York Times columnist and former Middle East reporter Tom Friedman had a fascinating article in this Sunday's paper. He basically argued that it was the incompetence of the crony/Mafia Ba'athist regime in Syria that led to the Arab Spring uprising there in the spring of 2011. But it had some help from Mother Nature. By letting rich supporters of the ruling party overuse the water table to irrigate their farms, the water level was lowered enough to make farming impossible for the class of ordinary peasant fellahin (farmers). These had in any case greatly increased in number due to improved health care that reduced infant mortality. So this caused a major migration from the countryside to the cities and the regime did not supply any basic services to deal with the migration. Suddenly these farmers were turned into day laborers being paid a pittance just to keep from starving and with no education and no real housing. This made Syria a tinderbox ripe for revolution. And rather than trying to dampen the kindling, Bashar Assad fanned the sparks by firing on the protesters in the city of Dera'a in southern Syria. With climate change expect many more of these types of connections in the upcoming decades.

Death of Syria, Death of Pan-Arabism?

With last week's bombing at the National Security Headquarters in Damascus that killed four leading figures in the Ba'athist regime, many commentators and other observers are now writing the obituary for the House of Assad that began 42 years ago this November. While I would be very worried if I were sitting in the presidential palace in Damascus, the regime is not necessarily over yet. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria's patron, suffered various grievous attacks from the Mujahideen al-Khalk (People's Holy Warriors and the Fedayeen al-Khalk (People's Sacrificers) during its first two years in power before it turned the corner.