A Recipe for Perpetual Insecurity? The Case of a Syrian Protected Area

Nov 5, 2021 | Peter Schwartzstein
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As snapshots of Syria’s environmental degradation go, Jebel Abdelaziz, in the northeastern part of the country, is hard to beat.

State mismanagement, particularly in establishing a protected area without local buy-in, hobbled the area’s pastoralism-propelled economy. Climate stresses compounded those difficulties. When the spark came, in the form of nationwide protests against the Assad regime in 2011, locals were only too keen to unleash years of pent-up fury.

ISIS elements are already expanding their local presence only five years after their occupation ended, according to security sources and a local NGO. Crime is proliferating among villages where social cohesion once mostly kept it in check. Unless authorities and their civil society partners can address the circumstances that gave rise to that initial discontent, it’s hard to imagine that Jebel Abdelaziz and similar swathes of Syria will ever again be at peace.

“We are the poorest of the poor,” said Abdelaziz Abdelrahman who has lost half his sheep to starvation this year and whose five remaining animals look like they might soon join the others.