Across Daraa province, groundwater is receding deeper into the earth. On top of climate factors like rising temperatures and fluctuating or delayed rainfall, human activity is taking a toll: Thousands of unlicensed wells have been drilled in recent years due to a lack of state oversight and a struggling public water network.
Starting in August, 120,000 Syrians living in Jordan’s refugee camps will lose one third of their World Food Program assistance, the latest in a series of aid cuts amid an “unprecedented funding crisis.”
In Afrin, there is a widespread trade in properties belonging to displaced residents known as “cost houses,” which are sold by Ankara-backed military factions and civilians for “dirt cheap” prices: the cost of repairs.
Four years ago, Khedr was displaced with his wife and daughter to Washokani camp, on the outskirts of Hasakah city. Adjusting to life in a tent has been difficult, but despite opportunities to seek refuge abroad, Khedr refuses to leave. He feels like he would be giving up on his right to return home one day.
For Syrians in France, recent confrontations between protesters and police have revived memories of the revolution and the ‘trauma of war,’ while provoking new anxieties around the country’s future and their place in it.
In the Bab Srijeh neighborhood of Old Damascus, residents say municipal permits to restore decaying buildings are elusive, but contractors with government connections hold the key.
Amina al-Fares lives with her family of 11 in an abandoned mill in the countryside of Tal Tamar, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province. The family was displaced from their home near Ras al-Ain in 2019, and lived in the open for many months until they found this place. But they now risk being expelled by its owner.
Once a traditional hobby practiced by a few hunters, falcon trapping is now a booming business in Syria. After 12 years of war and economic crisis, the trade is more popular than ever, and hunters are willing to take growing risks to catch the birds.
Syria's fertile Houran was once so productive it was called the "granary of Rome.” Today, farmers in southern Syria battle climate change and the economic fallout of war to make a living and preserve this traditional agriculture.
When Turkish-backed opposition forces took control of most of Afrin in 2018, villages on its outskirts became a line of contact with regime forces. There, residents face repeated shelling and cannot access their farmland, once their main livelihood.
