I have seen many fertile regions in Syria, near Idlib, along the stretch between Homs and Aleppo and in parts of the northeast/Rojava, the Hauran region was another one. It starts south of Damascus and prospered after it was annexed to the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan. A net of canals irrigated its fertile volcanic soil and the region became one of the granaries of the empire. Bosra, the capital of the province, was embellished with a large theatre, baths, colonnaded streets and basilicas, which all were built making use of the black basaltic stone which could be easily quarried because it formed several conical hills.
We passed many camps along the road, farm workers had set up their home here, in the scorching sun, no shade, no proper toilets, no electricity, long water-hoses were lying on the ground. I had no clue where they took the water from, maybe a well. It was so obvious that they were very poor and eventually I asked Bashar to stop and start a conversation.
The family had travelled 600km from the northeast to the very south of Syria to find work, but the draught made it impossible to find enough work to feed the family. When I pointed at a very young girl and asked if she went to school, her brother jokingly answered, “We would be even poorer if she did”. I almost started crying.
Camps of migrant workers along the road from Damascus to Bosra
It was a Muslim holiday and the kids wore kind of nice dresses. They had nothing but their tents.
Bashar asked the head of the family to walk us to our car and when saying goodbye I put all the cash I had in my wallet into his hand. I felt silly, but I had to do something.
Migrant workers from Hasaque- the northeast of Syria
Migrant workers from Hasaque- the northeast of Syri
Weeks later I gave a presentation on “Migration and Climate Change” at a conference in Vienna and used this family as an example. Their fate is so typical for forces Migration due to climate change. These type of refugees primarily migrate within a region, hardly ever to Europe.
Driving through the villages back to the main road many houses showed huge bullet holes, but this was nothing compared to the damarge in Aleppo or Homs. The happened at the early stage of the war, before the massive bombing.
bullet-ridden houses, idicate damage was done early in the war, before heavy weapons
Druze territory
In the 17th century Druzes from Lebanon relocated to Hauran because of rifts among clans of their community; in 1860 a conflict between Maronites and Druzes, which led to the intervention of France in support of the Maronites, led other Druzes to migrate to Hauran, which for this reason is also called Jebel al-Druze (Mountain of the Druzes, although the region is basically a flat tableland).
The newcomers repopulated some of the Roman towns and villages and nested their homes in the ancient buildings; although today the majority of the population has modern accommodation, still some farmers live in the houses of the first migrants.
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