Damascus, Rojava Race over Jazeera's Wheat Crops

Wheat harvest in 2021 in the town of Al-Darbasiyah, north of Hasaka Province (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Wheat harvest in 2021 in the town of Al-Darbasiyah, north of Hasaka Province (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Damascus, Rojava Race over Jazeera's Wheat Crops

Wheat harvest in 2021 in the town of Al-Darbasiyah, north of Hasaka Province (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Wheat harvest in 2021 in the town of Al-Darbasiyah, north of Hasaka Province (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Damascus and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava) have entered the race to buy wheat grown in Syria’s part of the Jazeera. The two sides are looking to secure their share of grain harvests after hundreds of hectares of Syrian wheat fields failed to endure sharp decreases in seasonal rainfall.

Syria, which used to produce four million tons of wheat before 2010, is now facing a real food security catastrophe.

Experts and Administration leaders estimate that the current season’s production may reach a quarter of the usual amount, with the possibility that production at its best will reach one million tons. This means that crop production will drop by 70% in large parts of the region.

Administration authorities, which control most of the agricultural lands in the northeastern areas of Syria’s Hasaka province, are working to determine the purchase price of wheat within the rain-fed areas. They are racing time to secure their wheat needs to produce subsidized bread.

“We will provide the farmers with all facilities to deliver their crops, and we will support private projects for those wishing to establish cotton gins and fodder warehouses,” said Salman Barudo, the co-chair of the Economy and Agriculture Board of the Administration.

Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the Annual Grain Conference to raise the purchase price of wheat from farmers to SYP 1700 with a reward of SYP 300 per kg delivered from safe areas so that the price of one kilogram becomes SYP 2000, in addition, to the reward of SYP 400 per kg delivered from the unsafe areas.

Prime Minister Hussein Arnous stressed that receiving every grain of wheat is a priority in the government’s work because the wheat crop is linked to food security and the citizen’s livelihood.

It should be noted that Syria is divided between three conflicting local areas of influence, in which the regime’s regions need two million tons of wheat annually.



Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday that more than two million Syrian refugees and internally displaced people have returned home since the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad in December.

Speaking during a visit to Damascus that coincided with World Refugee Day, Grandi described the situation in Syria as “fragile and hopeful” and warned that the returnees may not remain if Syria does not get more international assistance to rebuild its war-battered infrastructure.

“How can we make sure that the return of the Syrian displaced or refugees is sustainable, that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity?” Grandi asked a small group of journalists after the visit, during which he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and spoke with returning refugees.

“What is needed for people to return, electricity but also schools, also health centers, also safety and security,” he said.

Syria’s near 14-year civil war, which ended last December with the ouster of Assad in a lightning opposition offensive, killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Grandi said that 600,000 Syrians have returned to the country since Assad’s fall, and about another 1.5 million internally displaced people returned to their homes in the same period.

However, there is little aid available for the returnees, with multiple crises in the region -- including the new Israel-Iran war -- and shrinking support from donors. The UNHCR has reduced programs for Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, including healthcare, education and cash support for hundreds of thousands in Lebanon.

“The United States suspended all foreign assistance, and we were very much impacted, like others, and also other donors in Europe are reducing foreign assistance,” Grandi said, adding: “I tell the Europeans in particular, be careful. Remember 2015, 2016 when they cut food assistance to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, the Syrians moved toward Europe.”

Some have also fled for security reasons since Assad's fall. While the situation has stabilized since then, particularly in Damascus, the new government has struggled to extend its control over all areas of the country and to bring a patchwork of former opposition groups together into a national army.

Grandi said the UNHCR has been in talks with the Lebanese government, which halted official registration of new refugees in 2015, to register the new refugees and “provide them with basic assistance.”

“This is a complex community, of course, for whom the chances of return are not so strong right now,” he said. He said he had urged the Syrian authorities to make sure that measures taken in response to the attacks on civilians “are very strong and to prevent further episodes of violence.”

The Israel-Iran war has thrown further fuel on the flames in a region already dealing with multiple crises. Grandi noted that Iran is hosting millions of refugees from Afghanistan who may now be displaced again.

The UN does not yet have a sense of how many people have fled the conflict between Iran and Israel, he said.

“We know that some Iranians have gone to neighboring countries, like Azerbaijan or Armenia, but we have very little information. No country has asked for help yet,” he said. “And we have very little sense of the internal displacement, because my colleagues who are in Iran - they’re working out of bunkers because of the bombs.”