Southern Idlib’s water crisis deepens as displaced people return

IDLIB — Every day, water tankers roam the streets of southern Idlib cities and villages. It is an unfamiliar sight, and a sign of a deepening water crisis in the area since thousands of displaced people returned after the fall of the Assad regime last December. 

Basma Umm Ahmad returned with her family to the southern Idlib town of Kafr Aweed in early June, ending years of displacement in Idlib’s northern camps. But back in her hometown, she faces new problems. 

Water, the very foundation of life, is the “biggest challenge,” Umm Ahmad said. To provide the 20 barrels of water her family needs every 10 days, she relies on the roaming tankers. It is expensive for the widowed mother of four: 600 Turkish lira (TRY) (approximately $15). 

Umm Ahmad’s husband died in 2021. To support her family, she relies on “five dunums of fig trees” in the village that bring in an annual sum of around “$1,500, depending on the amount of fruit and the market price,” she told Syria Direct. 

Her family is one of 1,350 families to return to Kafr Aweed since the regime fell. The village’s single well, which produces 25 tanks of water a day, only meets the needs of half the population, local council head Faraj Mighlaj told Syria Direct. 

In Umm al-Shuhadaa, the camp in Idlib’s northern Atma region that Umm Ahmad was displaced to in 2019, her family of five lived in two rooms. Water, though, was not a problem: provided free of charge at a rate of one five-barrel tank every 48 hours. Even during periods when the camp lost financial support and she had to buy water, filling the tank cost 50 Syrian pounds (SYP) ($1.25). 

Her home in Kafr Aweed is much larger—250 square meters—but she has to ration water. Rather than using the taps, she uses a water jug to keep track of every drop. She has not planted flowers or greenery in the courtyard or beside her house, as she used to, because they “require watering and extra use.” 

Southern Idlib’s water crisis began in the early years of the Syrian revolution, when many public water stations and private wells were bombed. Most notably, the al-Laj water pipeline project in southern Idlib went out of service in 2013 due to bombardment and theft of its equipment. The al-Laj project served dozens of towns in Idlib’s southern Jabal al-Zawiya region, engineer Issa Kbeish, the head of studies at the state-run Idlib Water Establishment, explained. 

When Assad regime forces took control of large parts of southern Idlib in battles that began in 2019, the local infrastructure—including water stations and networks—were looted and vandalized. “Dozens of villages, especially in Jabal al-Zawiya, fell into thirst. The crisis deepened after Syria was liberated and more than 91,000 people returned to their original areas in southern Idlib,” said Abdulrahman Juneid, the province’s assistant director of social affairs and labor.

The public water establishment’s coverage is “limited,” Kbeish noted. “The pumping and water networks in villages have been severely damaged, and need complete rehabilitation.”

While the water crisis has imposed a new way of life on residents—rationing use and shouldering the burden of buying water at high costs—it has created new opportunities for some returnees. 

When Samer al-Issa came back from Turkey at the start of the year, he bought a car and outfitted it with a 25-barrel tank. He now makes his living driving one of the now-familiar water vehicles through the streets of southern Idlib, making around $400 a month, he told Syria Direct. 

Burdens on returnees

After years of longing for her family home and land, Umm Ahmad considered returning to Kafr Aweed as soon as the Assad regime fell, but the lack of services kept her away.

Over time, Umm al-Shuhadaa camp emptied out as her neighbors gradually returned to their own communities. Finally finding herself alone with only two other families in the camp, she decided to return, despite the burdens and expense of accessing water in her town. 

When Muhammad Khalil returned with his wife and three children to Kansafra, a town near Kafr Aweed, in May, he also found himself thrown into the regular search for water. In the camp where he was displaced, in the northern Idlib town of al-Burtuqali, it was freely available. 

In the camp, named Kansafra after his town, “water was pumped for two hours every five days, which was enough to fill a 10-barrel tank,” he told Syria Direct. Since returning, he finds himself “having to buy water from the tankers every 15 days.”

“I pay TRY 700 [$17.50] for a 27-barrel tanker coming from Kafr Nubl, seven kilometers away,” Khalil said. In northern Idlib, the same amount of water costs “no more than TRY 270 [$6.75].”

The price of a tanker of water varies depending on the distance traveled and the intended use—whether water for drinking or watering trees that have been neglected since 2019, local sources said. 

Khalil knew about the water crisis when he made the decision to return to his village, but weighed it against other factors. From the camp in al-Burtuqali, he had to travel 100 kilometers to reach his farmland, so the money spent on fuel “could be spent on water, in exchange for living in my house and working my land,” he said. 

South of Kansafra and Kafr Aweed, residents of al-Sheikh Mustafa village rely on tankers coming from al-Naqir, a town around four kilometers away. 

Ahmad Abdullah Annan decided to return to al-Sheikh Mustafa although it was largely destroyed. His family was among 130 families to return, out of a total of 650, Annan, who heads the village council, estimated. Many returnees “preferred to save what they were paying for rent [elsewhere], between $50 and $150, and use the money to repair their houses themselves—and buy water,” he said. 

Adapting to crisis

Most rural Idlib residents, especially in the southern countryside, typically collect water from the winter rains in underground storage tanks. 

When Khalil built his house in Kansafra in 1988, he installed a 1,000-barrel cistern. Upon his return earlier this year, he expected to find a good amount of water inside, but was surprised to find “the tank is completely empty, because of the drought.” Syria is currently experiencing its worst drought in decades. 

Read more: ‘Zero season’: Syrian farmers face worst drought in decades

Since Khalil returned at the start of summer, he will not be able to collect rainwater over the coming months. Instead, he fills his cistern with trucked-in water whenever he has the opportunity. Once, he had to wait three days before a tanker was available, “due to the high demand and inability of water resources in the area to respond,” he said.

Some returnees who own small pickup trucks used for farming transport water themselves, loading up tanks with capacities between five and 10 barrels. This strategy saves on time and the cost of transportation, as the price of a barrel of water alone is TRY 10 ($0.25).

Other residents are working to repair old private wells, or dig new ones, and sell the water for TRY 10—a steal compared to water transported from other areas. 

Zero infrastructure

Al-Sheikh Mustafa and neighboring villages such as al-Naqir and Maarzita were once served by a four-well public water station. The station was bombed out of service during the war, “including the water tower,” then looted after regime forces entered the area in 2019, Annan said. He estimated the cost of rehabilitating the wells alone at more than $100,000.

Al-Fatira, a southern Idlib village that around 2,000 people have returned to out of an original population of 9,000, is also suffering from an acute drinking water shortage. Its residents are fully reliant on water tankers coming from Kafr Nubl, around 10 kilometers away, Aref Abu Mahmoud, the local council head, told Syria Direct. 

During the war, villagers relied for three years on a well dug at their own expense in 2017. When the area became a line of contact with regime forces in 2019, residents were displaced and the well went out of service. 

Reactivating the well is an “urgent necessity,” but it needs a full set of equipment, including “a submersible pump, pipes, a solar power system and a generator,” which together cost “more than $50,000,” Abu Mahmoud said. 

The Idlib Water Establishment is working to repair and operate damaged infrastructure within its limited capacity, as the water crisis deepens. The current priority is the al-Laj water project.

The water establishment “has given great attention to the al-Laj water stations, and considered it one of its top priorities, given its vital importance in providing drinking water to southern Idlib,” Kbeish said. 

“There’s been contact with a number of humanitarian and international organizations. They made field visits and technical and financial assessments for the project,” he added. “Some of these organizations have received actual funding, and currently there is coordination with them to speed up the process of rehabilitation.” 

Steps to assess the damage and secure funding “to implement part of the projects” are “part of a comprehensive emergency plan aimed at gradually improving the water situation,” Kbeish said. “Funding remains one of the biggest challenges,” apart from not “the difficulty of implementing rehabilitation projects under the current conditions, with widespread destruction.” 

The list of projects needed to improve the water situation in Idlib is long. It includes the complete rehabilitation of the al-Laj project serving the southern countryside and implementation of the Ain al-Zarqa water project serving Idlib city. Local authorities are also looking to modernize water systems and address major damages to infrastructure as a result of the war, Kbeish said. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.