Farmers Turn to Solar Power in Syria's Former Breadbasket

At his farm in Syria's northeast, Abdullah al-Mohammed adjusts a large solar panel, one of hundreds that have cropped up over the years as farmers seek to stave off electricity shortages in the war-ravaged region.

Solar energy has offered a lifeline for the farmers amid drought and power shortages, but some warn the boom also has environmental costs in the once-fertile region.

"We are trying to revive our land," despite dwindling groundwater reserves, said Mohammed, 38, as he oriented the panel towards the sun near his cotton fields.

In his village of Al-Haddadiya in Hasakeh province, farmers are using solar energy to power irrigation systems for all kinds of crops, from vegetables to wheat, barley and cotton, AFP reported.

The father of three said he needs a reliable power supply to pump groundwater around 60 metres deep (nearly 200 feet) now -- compared to just 30 metres a few years back.

Northeast Syria is about 0.8 degrees Celsius (two degrees Fahrenheit) hotter today than it was 100 years ago and likely to experience drought every three years, according to a report last year by iMMAP, a Washington-based, data-focused non-profit.

The area was the country's breadbasket before 2011, when the government repressed peaceful protests, triggering a conflict that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

The war has battered the country's infrastructure and industry, and the state barely supplies a few hours of electricity per day.

Farmers in the now Kurdish-held region used to rely on state electricity and subsidised generator fuel for water pumps and irrigation, but power outages and rising fuel costs have compounded the climate-related challenges.

"Solar energy has saved agriculture and farmers from extinction," Mohammed said, near a patch of waist-high plants and sunflowers swaying gently in the wind.

From the opposition-held northwest to government-controlled areas, solar panels have become common in Syria, providing power for homes, public institutions and even camps for the displaced.

Between 2011 and 2021, Syria's state electricity production "dropped significantly to almost 57 percent" and power generation capacity plunged to 65 percent, according to a 2022 United Nations report.

Across Hasakeh province, solar panels have become indispensable for agriculture.

Around 10 kilometres (six miles) from Al-Haddadiya, farmer Hamid al-Awda began using solar power six years ago.

He has now installed 272 solar panels across his vast farmlands.

"Most people started selling their generators and replacing them with solar energy," said Awda, 60.

"Farmers who cannot afford solar energy and generators have seen their crops wither and dry out," he said, sweat trickling down his face.

Further north near the city of Qamishli, farmer Mohammed Ali al-Hussein said shortages of generator fuel once kept him from irrigating his crops for days.

"But now, we can water the lands from sunrise to sunset thanks to solar panels," said the 22-year-old, using a massive hose.

However, the iMMAP report also warned of a downside of the area's solar boom.

"Water pumps working on solar power... are also blamed for increased extraction and resulting in declining water table," the report said.

The rising use of groundwater wells also results in increased salinity, it added.

Didar Hasan from Wanlan, a local company involved in solar energy, said demand has boomed in northeast Syria in recent years amid power outages lasting up to 20 hours a day.

Demand will keep rising and "people will continue to rely heavily on solar energy, not because it is renewable... but because they need electricity," he told AFP.

While solar power has kept many farmers from abandoning their land and moving to the city, it comes with a future environmental cost, he warned.

Much of people's solar infrastructure is either "used, worn-out panels, imported from Europe where they are deemed electronic waste" or low-grade solar systems mostly made in China, he said.

Such materials have a lifespan of just a few years, Hasan added.

"After that, we will be left with tens of thousands of unusable solar panels -- essentially waste" -- in an area with no adequate facilities to process it, he said.

At 80, Syrian Abdel Rahman Athab still holds on to hope of finding his son, missing for 11 years. He searched tirelessly—watching former detainees leave prisons, combing through hospitals, and finally, visiting suspected mass grave sites. Despite losing three other children, Athab clings to the hope of finding his son or at least laying him to rest.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that since 2011, about 136,614 people have been forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained. Of these, over 113,000 remain missing, leaving families in heartbreaking uncertainty.

The pain of Athab’s family began with the start of Syria’s revolutionary unrest. The father, who had six sons and two daughters, recalls with deep sorrow: “Four were engineers, and two were teachers. At the onset of the revolution, they joined protests against the regime, and I stood with them.”

By late 2011, three of his sons were killed, their bodies returned in disfigured remains wrapped in black bags. Athab buried them, held a mourning service, and, though devastated, accepted their deaths, seeing them as martyrs for Syria. “I found comfort knowing they were in a safer place,” he said.

However, just two years after losing his sons, Athab’s fourth child disappeared in Damascus. The remaining members of his family fled the country, leaving the father’s heartache to grow even deeper.

In his ongoing search for his missing son, Athab told Asharq Al-Awsat that he and his family have been tracing newly uncovered mass grave sites across Syria in the past month.

On January 4, local Syrian outlets reported that residents found a mass grave near the Ninth Division in the town of Sanamayn, located in the northern countryside of Daraa in southern Syria.

This discovery followed another mass grave found about two weeks earlier at “Al-Kuwaiti Farm” on the outskirts of central Daraa.

The area had been under the control of a militia linked to the military intelligence branch, and 31 bodies, including those of women and a child, were recovered.

Additionally, a team from Human Rights Watch reported visiting a site in the al-Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus on December 11 and 12, 2024.

They found a large number of human remains at the location of a massacre that took place in April 2013, with more scattered around the surrounding area.

Farmers Turn to Solar Power in Syria's Former Breadbasket