France’s Confrontation with ISIS: A Religious and Political Perspectivehttps://english.aawsat.com/home/article/1144016/france%E2%80%99s-confrontation-isis-religious-and-political-perspective
France’s Confrontation with ISIS: A Religious and Political Perspective
French security forces rush in as people are evacuated in wake of the ISIS attacks in Paris in November 2015. (AFP)
Religious traditions and practices have become a prominent part of the modern world. Talk about modernism and post-modernism is no longer related to the defeat or death of religion. More so, the diversity of extremist terrorist organizations and their ability to recruit members and develop its ideology raises fundamental questions on theories on the anthropological and social roles played by religion in the Middle East and Europe.
Religion and religious institutions play an important role in the national unity of countries that oppose terrorism. This decisive role played by religion however is not limited to Arab and Islamic countries, but it goes beyond them to reach Europe, where France, Belgium and Spain are built on secular foundations.
In France, successive terrorist attacks, such the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks, spread fear throughout the country. Marking the three-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack, former President Francois Hollande said on his Facebook page: “France can be proud that it acted with dignity when it rallied with world powers on January 11 under the slogan of human rights and freedom.”
Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris-Sorbonne) and Director of the Group Societies, Religions and Secularism, Philip Portier said that the traditional vision of the role religion can play in society should be abandoned in this modern age. He explained that Islamic and Christian religious institutions in France played a central role in preventing divisions in local societies in diverse French cities. They succeeded in thwarting the spread of the clash based on religious bases.
This tolerant religious approach has become a support for national unity and no longer a passing practice in the battle against extremism. Portier pointed to prominent religious organizations in France that had held joint rallies to protest the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Even though they may be symbolic, the participation of clergymen alongside politicians in these rallies represents an important starting point for religion to act as a main backer of diversity and peaceful coexistence in the secular France.
This approach was reinforced by President Emmanuel Macron, who on the Charlie Hebdo anniversary, urged various religious authorities to continue their cooperation against terrorism. He also thanked them for their contributions towards national unity.
It is true that terrorist organizations have terrorist cells in France and other countries. These cells are comprised of extremist Muslim youth and may carry out terrorist attacks. Tackling this reality, said Portier, should take place away from Islamophobia. Furthermore, reality has demonstrated that extremism and the inclination towards terrorism exists in all religions. This inclination is linked to the nihilist radical ideology adopted by al-Qaeda and later ISIS.
Italian religious social scientist Enzo Pace said that Islam in Europe has created social and political tensions when issues of religious freedom and practice were brought up. Escalating tensions over this issue sparks strong reactions that fuel charged ideological clashes, he added.
Seeing as the situation is in constant change, then fortifying religious diversity and tolerance has become a public issue, linked to official and civil policies.
The social religious situation in Europe is rapidly changing, demanding that all of its countries review the rules of the game in order to organize relations between the churches, religious minorities and the state, he said. Islam did not suddenly appear on the scene, but it has existed before and become a part of the western European system and it therefore should not be ignored.
At this, Portier underscored the danger of considering Christian Catholicism as the main characteristic of the French identity. ISIS terrorist operations in the past three years demonstrated the wide religious resistance to terrorism.
They also showed a kind of negative resistance linked to how some Catholic groups view national unity from a narrow perspective and in a way that recalls the historic role Catholicism played in France.
This is taking place simultaneously with the rise of Islamophobia among secularists, said Portier.
Former President Jacques Chirac had in the past described France as the “oldest child of Catholicism.” Former President Nicolas Sarkozy had strongly defended the idea of the republic’s “Christian roots”. Moderate former Prime Minister Alain Juppe quoted Sarkozy in a book as saying: “We are Christians, why should we be ashamed of that?”
Portier remarked that since the 1960s, there was almost never any talk of “Christian roots”. This issue has been brought up in the public in the confrontation against Islam. Terrorist attacks may bolster the idea that France and Europe as a whole are strictly Christian.
Pope Francis spoke moderately of these “Christian roots” in Europe. He believes that many cultures formed Europe, adding that migrants should not be rejected under patrimonialist excuses that allege to protect the Christian culture in Europe. The pope believes that these “Christian roots” cannot justify a situation, dictatorship or colonization.
Portier also believes that ISIS has been able to influence the Muslim French youth because they do not feel as if they belong to a group and country. The ISIS cultural system acts on marginalizing the individual and it views France and the West as a Christian cultural bloc in confrontation with Islam. ISIS also recalls Crusader ideology that demonizes alleged non-believers. It is clear that this strategy turns the liberal and Christian West into an enemy that should be killed.
In the Middle East, this approach is not only a strategy, but a prevalent culture linked to sectarianism. This culture has a difficulty in recognizing an individual who lacks a sectarian affiliation.
In order to preserve the effective cooperation between religious figures and the state, Portier suggested that lessons be derived from the history of the clash between Catholics and secularists in France. This conflict eventually led to establishing equality between the religion and the state. Today, and even though religious organizations have been essential and fundamental for the state, Portier remarked that the gap between secular and Catholic circles remains wide.
This reality does not only threaten national unity and the battle against terrorism, but it also hampers efforts to build new examples of secularism that take into consideration general changes in Europe and France’s transformation into a religiously diverse country.
At times of crisis, rapprochement is made between religion and politics, said Portier. This was the case in World War I and today’s developments are not much different that those days. Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders are strongly committed to the values of the republic because it protects all sects. The values of the state are what prevent society from falling apart.
*Khaled Yamout is a visiting political science professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco.
Worn Banknotes, Tobacco Taxes: How Hamas Pays Its Membershttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5220957-worn-banknotes-tobacco-taxes-how-hamas-pays-its-members
Worn Banknotes, Tobacco Taxes: How Hamas Pays Its Members
Palestinians shop amid the rubble in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, February last year (DPA)
More than two months after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in Gaza, the group has steadily reasserted some security control in areas under its authority. Yet for Gaza’s residents, daily economic hardship and deteriorating living conditions show little sign of easing.
Hamas’s popular base, made up of its members, their families, and supporters, remains a key pillar of its strength. Nearly two years of war with Israel have partially disrupted the group’s ability to consistently pay salaries.
During the war, Israel sought to dry up Hamas’s financial network by killing figures responsible for transferring money inside Gaza, as well as raiding currency exchange companies in the occupied West Bank that Israeli authorities said were linked to Palestinian factions.
According to field sources and Hamas officials who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, the group faced difficulties and delays in paying salaries regularly at leadership, field and other levels due to security conditions.
It has since resumed partial payments to all its members, including leaders and fighters from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, while paying lower rates to its preaching and social apparatus, described as civilian elements.
Where does Hamas get its money?
Sources agree that Hamas has managed to preserve some of its financial resources, including commercial activities inside and outside Gaza. One Hamas source said these business revenues generate income for the group alongside funds received from supporting parties such as Iran and others.
They added that such external support fluctuates, sometimes declining, increasing or arriving with delays for reasons related to the donors.
The source said Hamas faces growing difficulties in transferring funds into Gaza, forcing those overseeing salary payments to rely on whatever cash remains accessible in their reserves or to collect revenues from their own commercial sources.
How are salaries paid?
Sources who receive some of these payments told Asharq Al-Awsat, on condition of anonymity, that salaries and stipends were sometimes paid regularly each month but were also delayed by periods ranging from six weeks to two months.
A Hamas source said salary rates varied and did not exceed 80 percent at best, particularly for leaders and operatives in the Qassam Brigades and at the political level.
Lower percentages were paid to the preaching and social apparatus and other bodies, alongside allocations for activities aimed at supporting the population and what the group calls its popular base.
The source said the lowest rates were paid to government employees at both civilian and military levels, reaching 60 percent at most before declining in recent months to around 35 percent.
Several sources said Hamas continues to pay stipends to the families of its members and leaders killed over decades of its activities, as well as to prisoners and wounded fighters.
They added that the group also supports families whose salaries were cut by the Palestinian Authority, continues to provide social assistance and allocates funds to projects aimed at supporting its popular base, including food aid, water provision and communal kitchens, in coordination with foreign institutions.
Asked how salaries are delivered, Hamas sources said payments are made through tight networks and by hand to avoid Israeli monitoring of electronic wallets and banks.
Worn banknotes and tobacco taxes
As Hamas relies on manual delivery, questions remain over how it secures cash under Israel’s blockade. A Hamas source said the process was complex and could not be disclosed for security reasons.
Local sources outside Hamas said the group depends heavily on traders to obtain cash, alongside its existing cash reserves and revenues from businesses it operates.
One source said Hamas often pays worn banknotes to government employees in particular, and to a lesser extent to Qassam fighters and political figures. This forces recipients to manage on their own as most traders refuse to accept damaged or worn currency.
Hamas has encouraged some small traders, especially fruit and vegetable sellers, to accept such notes in exchange for continued support and access to goods at lower prices.
Another source said Hamas has imposed taxes on certain goods, such as tobacco products, to raise funds, noting that most cigarette traders deal in cash rather than electronic wallets, which many Gaza residents now rely on.
Israeli accusations against Iran
On Dec. 7, Israel accused Iran of supporting what it described as a banking network transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas. Israel said the network consisted of Gaza-based money changers residing in Türkiye who exploit the country’s financial infrastructure for what it called terrorist purposes.
According to Israel, the network operated in full cooperation with the Iranian regime, transferring funds to Hamas and its leaders and managing wide ranging economic activity involving receiving money from Iran, storing it and transferring it to Hamas via Türkiye.
Israel published the identities of three individuals, including an official in Hamas’s financial apparatus and two money changers from Gaza, claiming they worked under the direction of Khalil al-Hayya.
Sources familiar with the two men told Asharq Al-Awsat they have lived outside Gaza for many years.
One was known to work with various Palestinian factions and had previously smuggled funds for them, including through tunnels along the Egyptian border, while also operating as a businessman in multiple fields beyond currency exchange.
Hamas sources dismissed the accusations as baseless, saying the group has its own methods for transferring funds.
They said Hamas often faces difficulties moving money from abroad into Gaza, a problem that also affects the West Bank due to Israeli pursuit and Palestinian Authority security pressure, though conditions there are better than in Gaza for transferring funds.
Sources from other Palestinian factions said they are also suffering financial crises and difficulties paying salaries and stipends to their members and leaders.
They said they sometimes distribute food aid and other assistance to help their members and families cope with harsh economic conditions, with most of the support coming through institutions backed by Iran or other parties.
Shadow Battles in Syria: Fighting ISIS, Rebuilding the State https://english.aawsat.com/features/5220371-shadow-battles-syria-fighting-isis-rebuilding-state%C2%A0
An aerial photograph shows thousands of people celebrating the first anniversary since the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad near The Damascus Sword monument in Umayyad Square, in the Syrian capital Damascus on December 8, 2025. (AFP)
Shadow Battles in Syria: Fighting ISIS, Rebuilding the State
An aerial photograph shows thousands of people celebrating the first anniversary since the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad near The Damascus Sword monument in Umayyad Square, in the Syrian capital Damascus on December 8, 2025. (AFP)
At the entrances to Damascus branching off the Mezzeh highway, just before Umayyad Square, young men with a quasi-military appearance line both sides of the road, selling flags and banners for “Liberation Day.”
In narrower streets and at intersections leading deeper into the city, they are met by women in long dresses, some with headscarves pulled halfway across their faces. The women drag one or two children behind them and carry loaves of bread for sale, stacking them openly and thrusting them toward passersby and car windows — unwrapped, exposed to diesel fumes and the dust rising from the rubble encircling the capital.
Selling bread in this manner has gradually become a “profession,” largely female, expanding as poverty deepens. Women queue at bakeries to purchase their ration, resell it for a small margin, then return to the lines, repeating the cycle late into the night.
This scene is not confined to Damascus; it recurs across Syrian cities and regions I visited, from Homs and Idlib to Aleppo. Over time, this female presence has become woven into the landscape of a prolonged crisis, a quiet pillar of daily survival.
Widespread destruction
If women’s exhausted faces and roughened hands are the clearest witnesses to a catastrophe now nearing its fifteenth year, the unrelenting destruction bears equally stark testimony. Entire neighborhoods and suburbs, flattened to the ground, ring Damascus, choking it in dust and debris.
The same gray desolation dominates major cities and their surrounding countryside, stretching across vast expanses of the country. Driving more than 350 kilometers without encountering a single intact tree, neighborhood, or home offers a visceral sense of what over a decade of killing, destruction, and vengeance has left behind.
The scale of devastation reflects not only military confrontations or the superiority of one side, but a deliberate effort to annihilate people and livelihoods, to extinguish even the faintest hope of return. What bombs spared was often burned, looted, or rendered uninhabitable. And yet, returns are taking place slowly, haltingly, through sheer individual persistence.
Only a few enclaves have endured in Damascus and its markets, or beyond in certain towns and districts, some even prospering, driven by sectarian calculations or political and commercial interests, most notably those tied to the production and trafficking of captagon.
A view of Damascus, Syria. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Damascus: The polished façade
Damascus was preparing for exceptional celebrations marking the first anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. Preparations were extensive: stages erected, loudspeakers installed, traffic rerouted, and banners raised proclaiming national unity, “One people... one nation”, and announcing that “the dark era has ended.”
Programs circulated via text messages urging citizens to participate and “celebrate freedom and hope... and complete the story.” But which story? The question reverberates through streets where bread is sold on bare asphalt while victory celebrations unfold.
Here, narratives multiply and diverge, sometimes to the point of contradiction, like neighboring bubbles that coexist without touching. A sharp vertical divide in perspectives remains, recalling 2011, when Syrians split to the brink between supporters and opponents, even as official discourse insists on projecting a seamless image of a new phase.
Silent security battle
Behind the celebratory façade, another battle is underway, which is quieter and more complex. “ISIS, especially the muhajireen [foreign fighters], poses our most serious challenge,” a senior Syrian security source who requested anonymity told Asharq Al-Awsat, noting that arrests and “neutralizations” are carried out regularly.
Another source explained that “security operations are conducted with precision and professionalism. Lists of those affiliated with extremist organizations under the broad ISIS umbrella are already in the hands of the security services.”
He added: “We know them individually. We monitor them closely. The former regime left behind an extremely detailed surveillance system that we continue to rely on.”
I met both sources days before the recent Palmyra incident. When it occurred, it appeared unsurprising; officials and those in sensitive positions had anticipated such scenarios as among several looming security risks, especially after Syria formally joined the counterterrorism coalition.
One source summarized these risks as three simultaneous confrontations: “First, the fight against ISIS and its offshoots, handled with extreme caution because it poses a personal threat to President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Second, the confrontation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which threatens the emerging state and its identity over the long term. Third, a colder, less intense standoff with Israel linked to developments in Sweida.”
In a semi-official assessment, the security source did not rule out that those released from al-Hol camp could become “time bombs,” exploited to destabilize internal security and serve the agendas of extremists rejecting the current transition of power.
Such incidents could also signal abroad that stripping the SDF of its “counterterrorism” duties would be futile, potentially “opening the door to packs of lone wolves.”
Destruction from fighting between the regime forces and opposition is seen in the Yarmuk camp on the outskirts of Damascus. (EPA)
Is a security approach enough?
The challenge confronting the state is not purely a security one, and a strictly securitized approach lacks consensus even within governing circles.
Contrary to those who view ISIS and extremism as a “technical problem” solvable through force alone, a figure close to the political leadership argues that “the core issue lies in absorbing a massive human bloc that spent years outside any normal social framework, without education, stable families, or organized structures of life.”
“The real challenge,” he added, “is integrating them into the idea of the state and rehabilitating them accordingly. Just as these adolescents were once pulled toward a specific form of extremism, today we must work to move them toward a middle ground.”
“If the president says we are leaving a factional phase and entering a state-based one, how does that happen at the grassroots level? Is it merely individual and security-driven, or is it societal as well?” he wondered.
In this light, one observer interpreted al-Sharaa’s statement — “Obey me so long as I obey God among you” — delivered from the Umayyad Mosque on the night of the grand celebration and widely criticized by civil and secular circles, as a message aimed at a different audience: a segment the state seeks to reassure through a religious call to obedience and rejection of rebellion.
If words come easily, lived reality does not.
Security is tightly enforced in major cities, such as Damascus and Aleppo, through heavy deployments and modern technologies, including drones, especially during sensitive periods like mass anniversary celebrations.
Beyond the cities, however, vast rural areas remain largely neglected, marked by immense destruction, extreme poverty, and rampant unemployment. Checkpoints line major inter-provincial roads, but side towns and village alleys are often left to fend for themselves.
Idlib, once cited as an exception for its services and administrative capacity, has lost much of that distinction since liberation. Opening to the rest of Syria exposed the city and its devastated countryside to the demands of ordinary life, revealing governance that had amounted largely to crisis management. That legacy persists even in everyday language: soldiers addressing civilians as “sheikh,” or telling them to “seek God’s help” as shorthand for “move along.”
Between Idlib’s countryside and Aleppo, villages and small towns are known for particular loyalties and affiliations — some far removed from the moderation celebrated on Damascus stages. Their reputations lead drivers to take longer routes considered “safer.”
In this belt, young men, especially the youngest, have long served as fuel for armed factions. In recent years, only Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained dominance on the ground.
After the fall of the regime, thousands joined the general security forces or the army, often for lack of alternatives. Many cannot afford to rebuild destroyed homes or recover looted livelihoods; barracks, offering food and shelter, remain preferable to civilian life.
A fabric of clashing identities
These identities crystallized during years of militarization, particularly after 2013, though their social roots run deeper. Today, anyone associated with the new authority is often labeled “Idlibi,” after Idlib — the stronghold of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham for nine years — a term frequently tinged with condescension in Damascus and Aleppo. Understanding the social and economic distinctions among these rural communities helps explain their divergent political and military choices.
Some towns, organized around extended families, land ownership, and later labor migration beginning in the mid-1980s, invested in education and professional paths while maintaining a socially rooted religiosity. These communities had previously experienced nationalist and Arabist currents before Baathist authoritarianism took hold.
Others, smaller towns built around sub-clans, relied on seasonal agriculture and service in the police and security apparatus of the former regime. They welcomed their sons’ joining the Nusra Front when it began recruiting, seeing in it both as an organized military path against Assad and a religious identity long suppressed.
Added to this are vast desert regions governed by tribal structures and shifting systems of mutual aid.
Though all are Arab Sunnis, their behaviors, loyalties, and alignments differed, shaping how radical factions penetrated some communities while failing in others, often setting one group against another.
Syrian security forces detain a suspect during an anti-ISIS operation in the Idlib countryside on December 1. (Syrian Interior Ministry)
Idlib and the keys to Damascus
When security officials say today they know extremists “one by one,” they rely partly on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s security apparatus and its accumulated knowledge of radical factions it fought in recent years, such as Jund al-Aqsa and the al-Qaeda-aligned Hurras al-Din, along with informant networks.
Idlib remains, to a significant extent, a secure stronghold holding key levers of power. Courts, administrative bodies, and civil registries still operate under the “Sharia courts” established in mid-2013, unlike other regions, especially Damascus, where transactions are centralized.
Sources identify three main recruitment pathways used by ISIS and its offshoots: ideological recruitment, the fastest and most effective, especially among youth who embraced extremism and have yet to absorb Syria’s rapid changes; recruitment driven by money and revenge amid pervasive poverty and lost status; and recruitment among foreign fighters, embittered by abandonment and with little left to lose.
The emerging state and the ‘Sahwa’ model
When President al-Sharaa returned from Washington, he carried a daunting mandate: to “confront and dismantle terrorist networks” linked to remnants of ISIS, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, and Hamas, according to US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack.
While Israel has targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Syria must contend with their residual networks. Yet the greater challenge remains ISIS and its offshoots, fighters who, until recently, were close “brothers in arms” to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
As observers await the form this confrontation will take, particularly in the absence of a unified army with a clear doctrine, Washington’s earlier experiment in post-Saddam Iraq looms large: the Sunni-on-Sunni “Awakening” (Sahwa).
The Sahwa rested on what an informed Iraqi source described as a “coalition of the harmed” from al-Qaeda, centered in Anbar province with its Sunni Arab identity and traditional religiosity. A similar model could emerge in Syria through an alliance of communities damaged by ISIS in the north and northeast, led by the emerging state that wants to fight extremism.
The Iraqi source, who closely followed the Sahwa’s rise and subsequent decline under then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, noted that tribes around Ramadi, especially al-Bourisha, al-Buallwan, al-Bou Fahd, and to a lesser extent al-Dulaim, formed the backbone of the fight after al-Qaeda devastated their trade and social fabric.
Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, greets people as he attends celebrations marking the first anniversary of the ousting of former President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP)
Though some were coerced into allegiance, clashes never fully ceased, culminating in atrocities such as the massacre of the al-Bu Nimr tribe, where nearly 2,000 men were executed. A Syrian parallel is the al-Shaitat tribe, which resisted ISIS and suffered one of the largest massacres, with around 1,800 young men killed.
Those who joined the Sahwa were required to publicly renounce al-Qaeda and integrate into security forces coordinated with US troops, in hopes of transforming that tribal bloc into a political actor.
From arms to politics
The Iraqi source highlighted a central lesson: despite the Sahwa’s security successes, it failed to transition into meaningful political participation. When its leaders entered elections, they achieved little representation and failed to build durable popular support.
That failure mirrors Syria’s core dilemma today: the collective transition from a factional, militarized reality confined to limited geography toward a state defined by broader political and administrative principles — and, militarily, by the monopoly of force within a single national army.
Between a woman selling bread on a street corner, a young man dancing in a public square, and institutions struggling to impose order and define the state, Syria appears as a country of overlapping bubbles: a glossy façade prepared for celebration, like a carefully designed postcard, and beneath it a fragile social and security depth whose battles remain unresolved.
Iraq’s Dreams of Wheat Independence Dashed by Water Crisis https://english.aawsat.com/features/5219947-iraq%E2%80%99s-dreams-wheat-independence-dashed-water-crisis%C2%A0
A drone view shows a circular wheat field in the desert of Basra, Iraq, November 27, 2025. (Reuters)
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Iraq’s Dreams of Wheat Independence Dashed by Water Crisis
A drone view shows a circular wheat field in the desert of Basra, Iraq, November 27, 2025. (Reuters)
Iraqi wheat farmer Ma'an al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his fields near the city of Najaf. But this year, those waters, which made the Fertile Crescent a cradle of ancient civilization 10,000 years ago, are drying up, and he sees few options.
"Drilling wells is not successful in our land, because the water is saline," al-Fatlawi said, as he stood by an irrigation canal near his parched fields awaiting the release of his allotted water supply.
A push by Iraq - historically among the Middle East's biggest wheat importers - to guarantee food security by ensuring wheat production covers the country's needs has led to three successive annual surpluses of the staple grain.
But those hard-won advances are now under threat as the driest year in modern history and record-low water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have reduced planting and could slash the harvest by up to 50% this season.
"Iraq is facing one of the most severe droughts that has been observed in decades," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Iraq representative Salah El Hajj Hassan told Reuters.
VULNERABLE TO NATURE AND NEIGHBORS
The crisis is laying bare Iraq's vulnerability.
A largely desert nation, Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk, according to the UN's Global Environment Outlook. Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000 and could climb by up to 5.6 C by the end of the century compared to the period before industrialization, according to the International Energy Agency. Rainfall is projected to decline.
But Iraq is also at the mercy of its neighbors for 70% of its water supply. And Türkiye and Iran have been using upstream dams to take a greater share of the region's shared resource.
The FAO says the diminishing amount of water that has trickled down to Iraq is the biggest factor behind the current crisis, which has forced Baghdad to introduce rationing.
Iraq's water reserves have plunged from 60 billion cubic meters in 2020 to less than 4 billion today, said El Hajj Hassan, who expects wheat production this season to drop by 30% to 50%.
"Rain-fed and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide," he said.
EFFORTS TO END IMPORT DEPENDENCE UNDER THREAT
To wean the country off its dependence on imports, Iraq's government has in recent years paid for high-yield seeds and inputs, promoted modern irrigation and desert farming to expand cultivation, and subsidized grain purchases to offer farmers more than double global wheat prices.
It is a plan that, though expensive, has boosted strategic wheat reserves to over 6 million metric tons in some seasons, overwhelming Iraq's silo capacity. The government, which purchased around 5.1 million tons of the 2025 harvest, said in September that those reserves could meet up to a year of demand.
Others, however, including Harry Istepanian - a water expert and founder of Iraq Climate Change Center - now expect imports to rise again, putting the country at greater risk of higher food prices with knock-on effects for trade and government budgets.
"Iraq's water and food security crisis is no longer just an environmental problem; it has immediate economic and security spillovers," Istepanian told Reuters.
A preliminary FAO forecast anticipates wheat import needs for the 2025/26 marketing year to increase to about 2.4 million tons.
Global wheat markets are currently oversupplied, offering cheaper options, but Iraq could once again face price volatility.
A person walks along the edge of uncultivated farmland on the outskirts of Najaf, where dry soil stretches across fields left unplanted due to water shortages, in Najaf, Iraq, November 29, 2025. (Reuters)
Iraq's trade ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the likelihood of increased imports.
In response to the crisis, the ministry of agriculture capped river-irrigated wheat at 1 million dunams in the 2025/26 season - half last season's level - and mandated modern irrigation techniques including drip and sprinkler systems to replace flood irrigation through open canals, which loses water through evaporation and seepage.
A dunam is a measurement of area roughly equivalent to a quarter acre.
The ministry is allocating 3.5 million dunams in desert areas using groundwater. That too is contingent on the use of modern irrigation.
"The plan was implemented in two phases," said Mahdi Dhamad al-Qaisi, an advisor to the agriculture minister. "Both require modern irrigation."
Rice cultivation, meanwhile, which is far more water-intensive than wheat, was banned nationwide.
RURAL LIVELIHOODS AT RISK
One ton of wheat production in Iraq requires about 1,100 cubic meters of water, said Ammar Abdul-Khaliq, head of the Wells and Groundwater Authority in southern Iraq. Pivoting to more dependence on wells to replace river water is risky.
"If water extraction continues without scientific study, groundwater reserves will decline," he said.
Basra aquifers, he said, have already fallen by three to five meters.
Groundwater irrigation systems are also expensive due to the required infrastructure like sprinklers and concrete basins. That presents a further economic challenge to rural Iraqis, who make up around 30% of the population.
Some 170,000 people have already been displaced in rural areas due to water scarcity, the FAO's El Hajj Hassan said.
"This is not a matter of only food security," he said. "It's worse when we look at it from the perspective of livelihoods."
At his farm in Najaf, al-Fatlawi is now experiencing that first-hand, having cut his wheat acreage to a fifth of its normal level this season and laid off all but two of his 10 workers.
"We rely on river water," he said.
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