The tragedy currently occurring in Syria is the focus of some degree of coverage in the media these days. However, most people know very little about the country, so I would like to provide some information about the country which might help those interested understand Syria and recent events a little better.
I hope to write one or two more posts in the next few days with a little more additional information about Syria.
Populatıon
The population of Syria is reported to be between 21.6 million and 23 million depending on which source you read.
This may be the result of whether or not, or which, refugees, Stateless, or foreigners are included in the calculation.
According to Syrian Government, UNHCR, UNRWA, World Bank, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International statistics at the end of 2011:
There were 510,444 Palestinian refugees registered by the UNRWA in Syria.
There were 107,640 refugees (93.5% Iraqi) registered by the UNHCR in Syria.
There were an additional almost 650,000 Iraqi refugees who were registered by the Syrian Government but not registered by the UNHCR in Syria.
There were an additional approximately 800,000 foreigners in Syria.
Of these 231,000 were Stateless individuals, mostly Kurds. Due to a controversial census taken in 1962 in which a number of Kurds were registered as foreign, they and their children have been listed since then as being Stateless in Syria. In April, 2011 the law was changed and 69,000 of these Stateless Kurds were able to obtain Syrian citizenship in 2011.
The population of Syria today is more than seven times what it was in 1946 when Syria gained its independence.
1946 - 2,978,000
1960 - 4,565,000
1970 - 6,305,000
1981 - 9,046,000
1994 - 13,782,000
2004 - 17,921,000
2012 - 21,674,000
Approximately 45% of the population of Syria today is 18 years old or younger.
Approximately 4% of the population of Syria today is 65 years old or older.
Land Mines
There are more than 613,000 land mines (~450,000 anti-personnel and ~163,000 anti-tank) in a strip of land along the Turkish side of the 911 km (566 mile) long Turkish-Syrian border. A total of 212 million square meters of land is reported to be mined along the Turkish sıde of this border.
The mines were laid between 1955 and 1998, and the Turkish Government has been discussing the removal of these mines since 2003. In the latest round the government was planning on signing a contract for the removal of the mines this November, with removal, which would take three or more years, beginning next spring.
The current unrest in Syria may cause the mine removal to be delayed, but the government has not announced its final decision yet.
These land mines are one of the major reasons that transit, for whatever reason, between Turkey and Syria is limited to only a few locations.
Drought and Food Insecurity
Between 2006 and 2010 the northern and northeastern areas of Syria suffered from an extreme drought.
From the report prepared by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food: Mission to Syria from 29 August to 7 September 2010:
Since 2006, four consecutive droughts have affected Syria, with the drought in 2007-2008 being particularly devastating. The losses resulting from these repeated droughts have been significant for the population in the North-eastern part of the country, particularly in the governorates of El-Hassakeh, Dayr-as-Zawr and Ar-Raqqa: in total, 1.3 million people have been affected, 95 % of which live in these governorates, and 800,000 of which were severely affected. Most affected are small-scale farmers, the situation of many of whom has further worsened in 2010 as a result of the yellow rust disease affecting the soft wheat production; and small-scale herders, who often lost 80-85 % of their livestock since 2005.
...
As a result of the repeated droughts, many families migrated to the urban centres, in the hope of finding seasonal or more permanent employment: widely cited estimates are that, in 2009, 29 to 30,000 families migrated, and that the figure in 2010 would be higher, approximating 50,000 families. Those who have moved from the regions affected by the drought are mostly small-scale farmers from the Al Hassakeh governorate. The result is that the land owned by these families is not attended, and that even more children drop out of schools: in some schools in North-eastern Syria, enrolment in schools decreased by 80 %.
...
The level of response of the international community to the drought has been unacceptably low. A first flash appeal from the UN Country Team (UNCT), in September 2008, met with a limited success, although it did allow WFP to provide food assistance to 40,000 small-scale herders living in the Badia until November 2009. In August 2009, following a Joint UN Assessment Mission, a Syria Drought Response Plan (SDRP) was adopted, in order to address urgent humanitarian needs and reduce the drought’s impact on the most vulnerable until the June 2010 harvests. By the end of 2009 however, only 14 % of the appeal was funded, obliging the UNCT to turn to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to cover a portion of the full amount requested. As of 31 August 2010, after the UNCT revised the amount needed for the SDRP to 43,687,572 USD, still only 33.4 % of this revised SDRP had secured funding.
Rainfall improved in the 2010-2011 growing season. However, many farmers were not able to plant because they did not have the resources to return to their land and/or did not have the resources to buy seeds or livestock.
Rainfall is reported to have been better this growing season, but the unrest in the country has made it very difficult or impossible for many farmers to plant, tend (obtain fuel, fertilizer, insecticides, etc.), or harvest and sell their crops. It is reported that agricultural production this year will be 30-50% less than the amount needed to feed the country.
From the 20 July 2012 Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s Report:
Since the outbreak of violence in Syria in March 2011, the humanitarian situation has continuously deteriorated. The civilian population is suffering from armed violence, human rights violations and lack of access to food, water and direly needed medical assistance. Thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands are trapped and over one million people are displaced. UN-Agencies estimate that more than 1.5 million people are urgently in need of humanitarian assistance. Around 9 million people live in the conflict areas and are directly or indirectly affected. Food prices having tripled, food insecurity has constantly risen since the crisis began and goes well beyond the areas directly affected by hostilities. Humanitarian agencies, such as ICRC, WFP, UNHCR, UNICEF and SARC (Syrian Arab Red Crescent) are scaling-up their assistance. WFP distributes food aid to some 850’000 people and ICRC brought assistance to over 600’000 people.
A major challenge of the humanitarian agencies (UN-organizations and their partners) is financing their humanitarian operations, which currently remain only 20% funded.
Food insecurity is a going to be a major problem in Syria in the very near future, and even though several international organizations are working to provide aid, if countries do not support their efforts financially this may become an even greater human tragedy.
Erdoğan, al-Assad, and the SNC
It is well known that Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had a very good relationship, and that Prime Minister Erdoğan referred to President al-Assad as ‘a good friend of mine’ until at least the middle of May, 2011.
It is also well known that during the summer of 2011 Prime Minister Erdoğan shifted his opinion towards President al-Assad from friendship to denunciation, while during the same period Prime Minister Erdoğan began to openly support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian Nation Council and aided in its establishment in Istanbul in August, 2011.
There is one aspect of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s relationship with the SNC and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood which is not widely known - there has been a decades long close relationship between Islamic political parties in Turkey and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Necmettin Erbakan, who is considered to be the founder of Islamic politics in Turkey and its leader in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, and who also oversaw the political career and rise of Prime Minister Erdoğan - which began in 1976, had a close relationship with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood for several decades, which continued until his death last February, and while Mr. Erbakan was the Prime Minister of Turkey from June, 1996 to June, 1997, he negotiated with Hafez al-Assad, then the President of Syria, on behalf of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and tried to secure a lifting or easing of the ban on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
- * - * -