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Conflict over Syria’s Wheat Crops

Conflict over Syria’s Wheat Crops
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Conflict over Syria’s Wheat Crops

Conflict over Syria’s Wheat Crops

Ravaged by nine years of war, Syria’s wheat production has been nearly halved. Despite that, rivals are vying to gain access to remaining crops, fighting with the US dollar, the Turkish lira and arms.

General overview

In 2010, Syrian wheat production stood at over 3.5 million tons and authorities ensured the storage of a parallel amount in silos across the country. After protests erupted in 2011, followed by a drought, production took a nosedive, recording its lowest at 1.2 million tons in 2018.

Throughout the nine years of conflict, Syria’s agricultural sector maintained its role in securing the minimum food security. Its role was stepped up in areas outside regime control as economic activities had deteriorated there.

Even though it succeeded in providing for thousands of low income families during times of war, the agricultural sector had taken a hit.

Conflict had destroyed irrigation networks, reduced accessibility to fertile land, resulted in shortage of raw materials and labor force, and affected transportation of goods, according to a report released by the Syrian Center for Research and Studies.

More so, fires instigated by conflict had grazed crops to the ground.

Between 2016 and 2018, a significant decrease in precipitation occurred. With 70 percent of crops dependent on rain, this negatively affected it.

The area of irrigated land was cut during this period, due to the drop in the amount of water and the increase in the cost of fuel used in operating wells.

The agricultural sector was also affected by the scarcity of agricultural supplies and their high costs. Local enterprises only met 10.8% of farmers' fertilizer needs.

As for fuels, the price of diesel reached 350 Syrian pounds per liter on the black market, compared to the government-backed price of 185 pounds.

Financial capabilities of farmers were also slashed by fluctuations in the exchange rate against the US dollar. Between 2018 and early 2020, the Syrian pound depreciated dramatically, raising the prices of agricultural supplies and commodities.

Compensation

According to Syrian officials, between 2017 and 2018 Syria had imported around 2.2 million tons of wheat, 90% of which was Russian. At the start of 2019, the government announced a plan to purchase 400,000 tons of wheat from independent contractors after having bought 200,000 tons of Russian wheat again in January.

At the beginning of 2020, the Syrian government allowed the import of wheat flour for all who wish to do so, meaning that it was no longer restricted to a category of industries or productive activities. And weeks ago, Moscow donated thousands of tons of wheat to Damascus.

The regime had also expanded the area of planted wheat because of the increase in rainfall and the return of farmers to their homes.

A government official said that the rate of implementation of the wheat cultivation plan stood at 70%. Of the total 1.8 million hectares planned for wheat cultivation, 1.2 million hectares were completed.

The increase in cultivation has reached areas in Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Idlib and Hasakah.

Conflict

Three warring parties are fighting to lay claim to Syria’s wheat production. Hasakah, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa fall under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Aleppo’s rural areas are controlled by SDF units, Turkey-backed opposition fighters, and regime forces.

Most of Idlib is controlled by Turkey-backed factions. In the east Euphrates region, Damascus controls two areas in Hasakah and Qamishli.

With the harvest season arriving, warring parties are competing to lure farmers to give up their wheat to them. The regime’s cabinet, a few days ago, approved raising the price of receiving wheat from farmers for the current season from 225 Syrian pounds to 400 pounds per kilogram (about 30 US cents, according to the exchange rate at that time)."

In mid-March, the Syrian government raised the price of wheat from 185 pounds to 225 pounds per kilogram.

An SDF official, speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, said that there is around 1.2 million tons of wheat in Hasakah and east Euphrates regions under SDF control.

Fighting off the government’s offer to farmers, the SDF is offering to buy the wheat in dollars at the rate of 17 cents per kilo. This has weakened the position of the regime that’s been trying hard to lure farmers into selling it the wheat yield.

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The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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Experts: Baby in Gaza Has Strain of Polio Linked to Mistakes in Eradication Campaign

The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

The baby in Gaza who was recently paralyzed by polio was infected with a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste, according to scientists who say the case is the result of “an unqualified failure” of public health policy.
The infection, which marked the first detection of polio in the war-torn Palestinian territory in more than 25 years, paralyzed the lower part of one leg in the unvaccinated 10-month-old child. The baby boy was one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Scientists who have been monitoring polio outbreaks said the baby's illness showed the failures of a global effort by the World Health Organization and its partners to fix serious problems in their otherwise largely successful eradication campaign, which has nearly wiped out the highly infectious disease. Separately, a draft report by experts deemed the WHO effort a failure and “a severe setback.”
The polio strain in question evolved from a weakened virus that was originally part of an oral vaccine credited with preventing millions of children worldwide from being paralyzed. But that virus was removed from the vaccine in 2016 in hopes of preventing vaccine-derived outbreaks.
Public health authorities knew that decision would leave people unprotected against that particular strain, but they thought they had a plan to ward off and quickly contain any outbreaks. Instead, the move resulted in a surge of thousands of cases, The Associated Press reported.
“It was a really horrible strategy,” said Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello, who was not involved with the report or the WHO. “The decision to switch vaccines was based on an incorrect assumption, and the result is now we have more polio and more paralyzed children.”
A draft copy of the report commissioned by the WHO and independent experts said the plan underestimated the amount of the strain in the environment and overestimated how well officials would be able to squash outbreaks.
The plan led to vaccine-linked polio outbreaks in 43 countries that paralyzed more than 3,300 children, the report concluded.
Even before the Gaza case was detected, officials reviewing the initiative to tinker with the vaccine concluded that “the worst-case scenario has materialized,” the report said.
The report has not yet been published, and some changes will likely be made before the final version is released next month, the WHO said.
The strain that infected the baby in Gaza had lingered in the environment and mutated into a version capable of starting outbreaks. It was traced to polio viruses spreading last year in Egypt, according to genetic sequencing, the WHO said.
In 2022, vaccine-linked polio viruses were found to be spreading in Britain, Israel and the US, where an unvaccinated man was paralyzed in upstate New York.
Scientists now worry that the emergence of polio in a war zone with an under-immunized population could fuel further spread.
Racaniello said the failure to track polio carefully and to sufficiently protect children against the strain removed from the vaccine has had devastating consequences.
“Only about 1% of polio cases are symptomatic, so 99% of infections are silently spreading the disease,” he said.
The oral polio vaccine, which contains a weakened live virus, was withdrawn in the US in 2000. Doctors continued to vaccinate children and eventually moved to an injected vaccine, which uses a dead virus and does not come with the risk that polio will be present in human waste. Such waste-borne virus could mutate into a form that triggers outbreaks in unvaccinated people.
The report's authors faulted leaders at the WHO and its partners, saying they were unable or unwilling “to recognize the seriousness of the evolving problem and take corrective action.”
WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer acknowledged that the vaccine strategy “exacerbated” the risk of epidemics linked to the vaccine.
He said in an email that immunization “was not implemented in such a way to rapidly stop outbreaks or to prevent new strains from emerging.” Rosenbauer said not hitting vaccination targets was the biggest risk for allowing vaccine-linked viruses to emerge.
“You need to reach the children with the vaccines ... regardless of which vaccines are used,” he said.
The WHO estimates that 95% of the population needs to be immunized against polio to stop outbreaks. The UN health agency said only about 90% of Gaza’s population was vaccinated earlier this year.
To try to stop polio in Gaza and the wider region, the WHO and its partners plan two rounds of vaccination campaigns later this week and next month, aiming to cover 640,000 children. Authorities will use a newer version of the oral polio vaccine that targets the problematic strain. The weakened live virus in the new vaccine is less likely to cause vaccine-derived outbreaks, but they are still possible.
Racaniello said it was “unethical” that the WHO and its partners were using a vaccine that is unlicensed in rich countries precisely because it can increase the risk of polio in unvaccinated children.
The oral polio vaccine, which has reduced infections globally by more than 99%, is easy to make and distribute. Children require just two drops per dose that can be administered by volunteers. The oral vaccine is better at stopping transmission than the injected version, and it is cheaper and easier to administer.
But as the number of polio cases caused by the wild virus have plummeted in recent years, health officials have been struggling to contain the increasing spread of vaccine-linked cases, which now comprise the majority of polio infections in more than a dozen countries, in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where transmission of the wild virus has never been stopped.
“This is the result of the Faustian bargain we made when we decided to use" the oral polio vaccine, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Philadelphia. “If we really want to eradicate polio, then we need to stop using the vaccine with live (weakened) virus.”