Devastated by war, farmers return life to Syria’s ‘oasis’

DARAYYA/DOUMA — In the 12th century, the Andalusian poet and traveler Ibn Jubayr described the agricultural lands around Damascus as “the halo around the moon.” 

“Its green valley extends east as far as the eye can see: wherever you look on four sides, your gaze meets ripe fruit. Those who said, ‘If paradise is on earth, then without doubt Damascus is part of it…’ spoke the truth,” he wrote, while traveling through the Syrian capital. 

Damascus is nestled in a fertile oasis—“Ghouta”—where olive groves, fruit orchards and canopy forests once flourished. At the time Ibn Jubayr wrote, and for hundreds of years after, an abundance of water flowed into the Ghouta plain through the Barada River, which broke into seven branches, feeding the land. 

But by the early 2000s, rapid, uncontrolled urban development and poor resource management under the late Assad regime—combined with waves of severe drought—reduced much of the river to a mere trickle, Muhammad Fares, a Syrian writer and environmental researcher focused on the Damascus countryside, told Syria Direct. 

Then came the 2011 uprising. Over years of war and siege that followed, much of the parched land became battlefields. Thousands of people were killed, and vast stretches of the Ghouta’s fields and forests were destroyed. 

“The revolution in Syria can be described as a revolution of the countryside,” Fares said, with towns in the Ghouta plain emerging as epicenters of resistance to the regime. “Unfortunately, Damascus’s countryside has paid a much higher price than Damascus,” he added. 

Around 2018, after heavy fighting ceased in the area, some of Ghouta’s farmers began to return to their land, re-tilling their soil and replanting fruit trees. Others returned more recently, following the overthrow of the regime in December 2024. They face many challenges to return life to their land, from pollution and water shortages to a lack of fuel and massive levels of destruction. In the once-green halo of Damascus, many are starting over from zero. 

‘There wasn’t a single drop of green’

On a cloudy day in the West Ghouta city of Darayya, Omar Abu al-Hawa harvested leeks, pulling them from the land his family had cultivated for generations. The 52-year-old farmer fled his land in 2011, soon after the revolution began. He returned in 2019, a few years after Assad reached a surrender deal with rebel fighters in 2016. 

“There wasn’t a single drop of green, it was like a desert,” Abu al-Hawa recalled. Over the eight years he was gone, “the ground was filled with missiles, along with [gun] shells and rockets.”

Omar Abu al-Hawa poses for a photo on his farm in the West Ghouta city of Darayya on the outskirts of Damascus,10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

“We came to rehabilitate the land, but we’re starting fresh, all over again,” he told Syria Direct.

A chemical attack in February 2015 left large parts of his 15 dunams unplantable for years afterward, he said. The Arab Reform Initiative reported in 2021 that chemical weapons had contaminated Syria’s groundwater and soil, which was “likely to cause serious environmental concerns for the future of agriculture in Syria.”

“Darayya faced serious neglect and was largely shunned on an international level during the regime’s rule,” the farmer added. “Darayya was barred off, treated like a war zone.” 

Abu al-Hawa turned to the roadside, lined by piles of cracked, dry dirt, where grass barely poked through. He remembered his childhood, when fruit trees shaded this same street, their branches heavy with apricots, almonds, peaches and plums. “You could walk three kilometers and you wouldn’t see the sunlight. It was a forest, there were so many trees,” he said. “You could choose from apples, peaches, a mix of all fruits, anything you wanted.” 

In the early 1990s, a drought killed many of the trees Abu al-Hawa walked under as a child. Those that remained were destroyed during the war. 

Young fruit trees line the driveway of Omar Abu al-Hawa’s farm in the West Ghouta city of Darayya, 10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

‘A city of bloodied grapes’ 

Grape vines also once stretched into the distance, Abu al-Hawa said, a grin stretching across his weathered face. “This area is fundamental to the region for grape cultivation,” he said, pointing to the small vineyard he had built on his land beside young fruit trees, their branches bare in February.

In downtown Darayya, a short drive from Abu al-Hawa’s plot of land, Hussam al-Lahham, a local government official, spoke of the significance of grapes to the city. “Darayya is known for its grapes, to the extent that it has been called the city of grapes and blood,” he told Syria Direct.

At the onset of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Darayya was an epicenter of nonviolent resistance to Assad’s rule. However, the regime responded violently. On August 20, 2012, regime forces began to indiscriminately shell residential areas and hospitals. They soon entered the city and in a 72-hour window carried out a massacre, committing mass executions of men, women, and children. Over the course of six days, the regime killed over 700 people—one of the bloodiest massacres of the war. 

“During the revolution, the bloodshed was immense, and the grapes of Darayya symbolically mixed with blood, leading it to be referred to as ‘a city of bloodied grapes’,” al-Lahham said. 

Al-Lahham and his family were among the 1,000 families who returned to Darayya after the regime was overthrown in December, many of whom are farmers. Between 30 and 40 percent of Darayya residents work in agriculture, he said. 

‘The harvest was once plentiful’

“Darayya historically provided its fruits to Damascus, and the harvest was once plentiful,” al-Lahham said. “Now, due to the war, all the trees have been cut down. Nothing remains as a testament to what was once there.” 

A leek harvest on Omar Abu Hawa’s farm in Darayya, 10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Al-Lahham also noted that in addition to heavy bombing, regime forces further destroyed Darayya’s orchards by chopping down trees to sell them as firewood. 

Read more: Under the axe: The fall of Daraa’s forests and fruit trees

Meanwhile, among the “significant agricultural challenges” farmers face is the loss of “much of their arable land due to the lack of irrigation and water supply,” he added. “The crops in Darayya require water, primarily from rainfall, which is unfortunately scarce.”

Al-Lahham said the local government was trying to support farmers, but had few resources. He hoped for funding to provide solar panels to power water pumps. “If we can provide farmers with the means to extract water—either through generators or solar systems—we could help them cultivate their land and restore its greenery,” he said. 

Electricity is scarce in Syria, especially following the widespread destruction of power plants, transmission lines, and distribution networks during the war, which left the sector’s infrastructure in shambles. Diesel is also expensive and subject to frequent price changes. 

“There are huge difficulties, and frankly, the situation is quite dire,” farmer Abu al-Hawa, said, noting he had received little support since the fall of Assad. Before, international organizations occasionally provided seedlings for trees or other plants, but now “we aren’t being provided with fuel, fertilizer, or any resources that could help restore our land to its former state”. 

“Nevertheless, we still have hope that the government will support us in recovering what we’ve lost,” he said. 

Fuel and water shortages

About 30 kilometers from Darayya, in the East Ghouta city of Douma, 50-year-old Muhammad Fatoum stood beside a rusty pump he was using to water his cabbage plants in a nearby field. 

Fatoum said he was pumping water from a depth of around 25 meters, a task requiring a costly amount of fuel. During the four-month cabbage harvest, watering each dunum of land requires around 120 liters of diesel, he added. For his 10 dunums of cabbage, he expected to use around 1,200 liters, for a total cost of $1,200 at roughly $1 per liter of diesel. 

“We work very hard planting crops,” he said, “but it’s likely we won’t cover our production costs and may only bring in a dollar—if we’re lucky.” 

It was not always like this. Water was once abundant and easily extractable, Fatoum said. “It was called Ghouta for the abundance of water and the rivers that flowed through it. The area was filled with many types of trees, including walnuts, pomegranates, figs, and various kinds of nuts. The lush greenery was plentiful. However, the war that affected the region left the land barren,” he said.

Fatoum spoke about the loss of the Ghouta’s walnut trees, which once grew along the banks of the Barada River. “Unfortunately, this type of walnut has almost disappeared from the Ghouta,” he said. “Due to the war and water shortages, there are only a few left.” 

Issa al-Mustafa al-Masri’s cow rests on his land in the East Ghouta city of Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, 10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Like Darayya, Douma was subject to years of heavy fighting and multiple periods of siege by the regime’s forces. In 2018, a chemical weapon attack on the city killed more than 40 people and injured hundreds. 

‘Dried up by decision’

“Without the Barada River, there’ll be neither Ghouta nor Damascus. It is the main source of irrigation and drinking water,” Fares, the environmental researcher, said. 

Fares noted that the Barada Spring provides Damascus with around 15 percent of its drinking water. The Ayn al-Fijeh spring, in Wadi Barada, provides another 65 percent of the capital’s water. Both critical sources are under threat. 

When Fares returned to the Barada Spring in December 2024, he found it completely dry, he said. He remembers his childhood, in the late 1990s, when the spring filled an entire lake, where locals and tourists alike would spend summers sailing. 

“The river dried up by decision, not by natural disaster. It’s due to the poor management of the area,” Fares said. 

In the 1990s, Damascus’s skyrocketing population put new pressure on the city’s water resources, Fares explained. “The [Assad] regime, instead of finding some scientific technique to solve the problem, went against science, against geology and geography, to dig wells inside and around the spring of the Barada,” he said. This was the decision that deprived the Barada valley of water and ultimately contributed to the water shortages residents face today.  

“If the problem of water distribution—and resources in general—is not fixed, more problems will appear in the future,” Fares said. 

Issa al-Mustafa al-Masri stands beside an olive tree, its branches cut for firewood during a regime siege of Douma, 10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

‘We had to cut down the ancient olive trees’ 

Not far from Fatoum’s plot of land in Douma, Issa al-Mustafa al-Masri strolled over his field of cabbage and beans to an old, warped olive tree. The tree was bare, all of its branches sliced off. It resembled other olive trees around al-Masri’s land. Some were in pieces, others just stumps jutting out from the cold earth. 

“Before the war, it was all olive trees,” al-Masri said, gesturing around his farm. 

Between 2013 and 2018, regime forces encircled Douma, choking off food and fuel. “There was no gas, no diesel, no electricity,” al-Masri recounted. 

“We had to burn the [olive trees’] branches for heat, and to cook,” he said, to save children “dying of cold and hunger.” Some of the trees were hundreds or thousands of years old, al-Masri estimated. 

Inside al-Masri’s home, his wife, Faten al-Masri, recounted the siege. “For seven years, we were stuck in our home. We couldn’t farm, raise animals or anything,” she told Syria Direct. “The fear and anxiety was overwhelming,” she said, “There was no food, there was nothing. We had to cut down the ancient olive trees, which are very important to us.” 

As they were speaking, their son, 20-year-old Muhammad al-Masri, joined them inside. Faten brought out coffee, olives and makdous (pickled eggplants) grown on their land. 

Issa al-Mustafa al-Masri and his son, Muhammad, sit at their home in the East Ghouta city of Douma, 10/2/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

After the regime fell in December, Muhammad came home to the farm. He had fled to Jordan in 2023 to avoid mandatory military conscription, but now, he said, was planning on staying to help his father. 

“Every day, he brings me fresh ingredients straight from the field. It’s wonderful to have fresh tomatoes and flowers that my son gives me,” Faten said, smiling.

She recounted her fond childhood memories of Douma, running through fields and olive groves. “Hopefully, these young people will share the beautiful memories of their experiences gardening and the vegetables they grow,” she said, turning to her son. 

*Correction (3/26/2025): The initial version of this report incorrectly wrote the name of Hussam al-Lahham, a local government official in Darayya, as Hussam al-Aham. Syria Direct regrets the error.