Atieh El Hindi, the director of the Syrian National Agricultural Policy Center, has stated that between 2007 and 2008, drought was a main factor in the unprecedented rise in Syrian food prices; in this single year, wheat, rice, and feed prices more than doubled (
17,
18). By February of 2010, the price of livestock feed had increased by three fourths, and the drought nearly obliterated all herds (
16,
19). There was a dramatic increase in nutrition-related diseases among children in the northeast provinces (
20), and enrollment in schools dropped by as much as 80% as many families left the region (
21). Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, shifted to liberalizing the economy by cutting the fuel and food subsidies on which many Syrians had become dependent. These cuts continued despite the drought, further destabilizing the lives of those affected (
22). Rural Syria’s heavy year-to-year reliance on agricultural production left it unable to outlast a severe prolonged drought, and a mass migration of rural farming families to urban areas ensued.
Estimates of the number of people internally displaced by the drought are as high as 1.5 million (
3,
4,
13). Most migrated to the peripheries of Syria’s cities, already burdened by strong population growth (∼2.5% per year) and the influx of an estimated 1.2–1.5 million Iraqi refugees between 2003 and 2007, many of whom arrived toward the tail end of this time frame at the beginning of the drought and remained in Syria (
23). By 2010, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and Iraqi refugees made up roughly 20% of Syria’s urban population. The total urban population of Syria in 2002 was 8.9 million but, by the end of 2010, had grown to 13.8 million, a more than 50% increase in only 8 years, a far greater rate than for the Syrian population as a whole (
Fig. 1D) (
24). The population shock to Syria’s urban areas further increased the strain on its resources (
11).
The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest (
13). Thus, the migration in response to the severe and prolonged drought exacerbated a number of the factors often cited as contributing to the unrest, which include unemployment, corruption, and rampant inequality (
23).