Illegal Logging Turns Syria's Forests into 'Barren Land'

A woman on a donkey carrying wood from trees cut at the Mount Abdulaziz nature reserve outside Hasakeh. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP
A woman on a donkey carrying wood from trees cut at the Mount Abdulaziz nature reserve outside Hasakeh. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP
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Illegal Logging Turns Syria's Forests into 'Barren Land'

A woman on a donkey carrying wood from trees cut at the Mount Abdulaziz nature reserve outside Hasakeh. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP
A woman on a donkey carrying wood from trees cut at the Mount Abdulaziz nature reserve outside Hasakeh. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

On a riverbank in war-ravaged Syria's north, felling has reduced what was once a lush forest to dispersed trees and decimated trunks poking out from dry, crumbly soil.

Twelve years of conflict that led to a spike in illegal logging, along with the effects of climate change and other factors, have eroded Syria's greenery, said AFP.

The dwindling forest on the shores of the Euphrates river "is shrinking every year", said Ahmed al-Sheikh, 40, a supermarket owner in the village of Jaabar, in the Kurdish-held part of Syria's Raqa province.

Before, "the forest would attract tourists, birds, purify the air and protect the area from dust storms", he said.

But fuel shortages and rampant poverty during the war have pushed many Syrians to chop the trees to sell or use for heating, dealing a blow to the nature surrounding Jaabar.

Its ancient citadel had made the village a popular pre-war tourist attraction, with a reforestation project launched in the mid-1990s offering rare respite from the searing heat.

"Some people cut down the trees to sell them and earn money, others to keep warm during the winter," Sheikh said.
"If this goes on, desertification will follow."

Residents told AFP they hear loggers riding motorbikes into the forest at night to cut down trees.

Even in broad daylight, young men sneak into the woods to chop trees, evading the handful of forest guards patrolling the vast, green spaces.

'No shade left'
Syria's war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

It has also devastated the environment, triggering an "alarming" loss of forest cover across the country, Dutch peacebuilding group PAX warned in a report earlier this year.

The country has witnessed a "26-percent decrease in tree cover since 2000", according to data from Global Forest Watch.

Ten kilometers (six miles) from Jaabar, the same fate has befallen the trees of Tuwayhina.

"In my childhood, we used to come here with friends to sit under the shade of eucalyptus and pine trees," said Mohammed Ali, surrounded by tree trunks scattered across the sun-scorched earth.

"But now it is a barren land," said the 30-year-old nurse. "Now, there is no shade left, only the heat of the sun everywhere."

"The dust storms never stop, the lake is drying up and there are no trees left," Ali said, referring to Lake Assad, Syria's largest freshwater dam reservoir.

Water levels have dropped and pollution has worsened in the Euphrates and the reservoir it feeds, with the river's flow further impacted by upstream dams in Türkiye.

Deforestation in Syria is largely attributed to logging and thinning for firewood, according to the PAX report.

"Soaring fuel prices combined with massive displacement form the main driver for large-scale deforestation throughout Syria," it said.

"Civilians are cutting down trees for cooking and heating, while there are clear indications that armed groups also use illegal logging and wood sales as a source of income."

'Blanket of greenery'
The once-dense forests of Syria's west "have suffered the most degradation caused by the war", mostly from tree felling and wildfires, PAX said.

Latakia, Hama, Homs and Idlib provinces lost at least 36 percent of their trees in the decade following 2011, when the conflict erupted, according to PAX.

In the northeast, authorities have "no precise data" about the damage but its impact is "obvious", Ibrahim Asaad, who co-chairs the Kurdish semi-autonomous administration's environment body, told AFP.

The area was the country's breadbasket in pre-war times, but has witnessed severe droughts and reduced rainfall in recent years.

On the outskirts of Hasakeh, a city further east, the Mount Abdulaziz reserve has been plagued by dry spells and some illegal logging.

The trees had provided a "blanket of greenery", said Hussein Saleh al-Helou, a 65-year-old resident of the village of Al-Naseri.

But now "there is no water, the trees near the village have withered... and people have started cutting them", he told AFP, surrounded by vast barren lands and hills.

"Logging has had a huge impact on the village," Helou said.

"The temperature has risen, and the weather is not the same any more."



Spain Says April Blackout Was Caused by Grid Failures and Poor Planning, Not a Cyberattack 

This photograph shows a general view of Barcelona at night, partially without electricity, with the Sagrada Familia seen on the right, following a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, on April 28, 2025. (AFP) 
This photograph shows a general view of Barcelona at night, partially without electricity, with the Sagrada Familia seen on the right, following a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, on April 28, 2025. (AFP) 
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Spain Says April Blackout Was Caused by Grid Failures and Poor Planning, Not a Cyberattack 

This photograph shows a general view of Barcelona at night, partially without electricity, with the Sagrada Familia seen on the right, following a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, on April 28, 2025. (AFP) 
This photograph shows a general view of Barcelona at night, partially without electricity, with the Sagrada Familia seen on the right, following a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, on April 28, 2025. (AFP) 

Spain's government said Tuesday that the massive April power outage across Spain and Portugal that left tens of millions of people disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that left the grid unable to handle a surge in voltage.

Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation's energy policy, told reporters that a voltage surge led to small grid failures, mainly in the south of Spain, which then cascaded to larger ones and brought the system down in the two Iberian Peninsula nations.

She ruled out that the failure was due to a cyberattack.

The outage began shortly after noon on April 28 in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transit systems, cellular networks, internet connectivity and other critical infrastructure. Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity, or about 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain's, also went down. Only the countries' island territories were spared.

“All of this happened in 12 seconds, with most of the power loss happening in just five seconds,” Aagesen said.

Several technical causes contributed to the event, including “poor planning” by Spain's grid operator Red Eléctrica, which didn’t find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations, the minister said.

She also said that some power plants that utilities shut off preventively when the disruptions started could have stayed online to help manage the system.

Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day.

The government's report included analysis from Spain's national security agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors.

The government had previously narrowed down the source of the outage to three power plants that tripped in southern Spain.

In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power cuts. The outage ignited a fierce debate about whether Spain's high levels of renewable power and not enough energy generated from nuclear or gas-fired power plants had something to do with the grid failing, which the government has repeatedly denied.

Spain is at the forefront of Europe's transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57% of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources like wind, hydropower and solar. The country is also phasing out its nuclear plants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed back against such speculation and defended the country's rapid ramping up of renewables. He asked for patience and said that his government would not “deviate a single millimeter” from its energy transition plans, which include a goal of generating 81% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.