WikiLeaks, drought and Syria |

IN the 1970s, I got my bachelor's and master's degrees in modern Middle East studies, and I can assure you that at no time did environmental or climate issues appear anywhere in the syllabi of my courses.

Today, you can't understand the Arab awakenings or their solutions without considering climate, environment and population stresses.

I've been reporting on the connection between the Syrian drought and the uprising there for a Showtime documentary that will air in April, but recently our researchers came across a WikiLeaks cable that brilliantly foreshadowed how environmental stresses would fuel the uprising.

Sent on Nov 8, 2008, from the United States embassy in Damascus to the State Department, the cable details how, in light of what was a devastating Syrian drought -- it lasted from 2006 to 2010 -- Syria's United Nations' food and agriculture representative, Abdullah Yehia, was seeking drought assistance from the UN and wanted the US to contribute.

Here are some key lines:

"The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs launched an appeal on Sept 29 requesting roughly US$20.23 million (RM67.2 million) to assist an estimated one million people impacted by what the UN describes as the country's worst drought in four decades.

"Yehia proposes to use money from the appeal to provide seed and technical assistance to 15,000 small-holding farmers in northeast Syria in an effort to preserve the social and economic fabric of this rural, agricultural community. If UNFAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation) efforts fail, Yehia predicts mass migration from the northeast, which could act as a multiplier on social and economic pressures already at play and undermine stability."

"Yehia does not believe that the (government of Bashar al-Assad) will allow any Syrian citizen to starve. ... However, Yehia told us that the Syrian minister of agriculture... stated publicly that economic and social fallout from the drought was 'beyond our capacity as a country to deal with'. What the UN is trying to combat through this appeal, Yehia says, is the potential for 'social destruction' that would accompany erosion of the agricultural industry in rural Syria.

"This social destruction would lead to political instability.

"Without direct assistance, Yehia predicts that most of these 15,000 small-holding farmers would be forced to depart al-Hasakah province to seek work in larger cities in western Syria.