How climate change could be Syria's next post-Assad challenge

For years, Syria feared the Euphrates was disappearing. Successive droughts depleted reservoirs, slashed hydropower generation, and left farmers across the country's northeast struggling through one of the worst agricultural crises in decades.

Then the river came roaring back.

In late May, exceptional rainfall combined with emergency releases from the Tabqa Dam sent floodwaters surging through Raqqa, once the de facto capital of the Islamic State (IS) group, and Deir az-Zour, Syria's eastern breadbasket, submerging thousands of hectares of farmland, disabling water infrastructure, and forcing thousands of families to flee just as the wheat harvest began.

The flooding came at a pivotal moment for Syria's post-Assad transition. More than eighteen months after the dictator’s downfall, the new authorities have sought to demonstrate that they can govern a country fractured by nearly fifteen years of war.

Instead, the Euphrates became the major climate emergency of the transition, exposing the difficulty of restoring state capacity while responding to increasingly volatile environmental crises.

Yet, it was not an isolated event. A year earlier, severe drought gripped much of Syria while wildfires swept through the coastal governorates of Latakia and Tartous, destroying thousands of hectares of forests, olive groves and farmland.

Together, the drought, wildfires, and floods illustrate how climate variability is compounding the legacy of conflict, stretching limited state capacity.

The climate crisis of the new Syria

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the Euphrates expanded to nearly three times its normal width - from about 61 square kilometres to almost 189 square kilometres - flooding more than 7,200 hectares of cultivated land in Deir az-Zour during one of the most critical periods of the wheat harvest.

UNICEF estimated that around 17,000 people were directly affected across Raqqa and Deir az-Zour, with dozens of water treatment facilities knocked out of service and roughly 2,000 hectares of agricultural land inundated.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reported that at least 1,626 families - more than 8,000 people - were displaced after reservoir levels behind the Tabqa Dam exceeded 97 percent of capacity, forcing authorities to open spillway gates for the first time in more than three decades.

For local communities still recovering from years of conflict, the flood represented another devastating setback rather than an isolated natural disaster.

Emergency response or governance failure?

Government officials argue that opening the spillways prevented an even greater catastrophe.

Haitham Bakour, Director General of the Euphrates Dam Authority, said water levels had stabilised following emergency releases and that authorities continued coordinating with emergency services to monitor the situation.

Similarly, Faiz Abbas, who headed the emergency response committee in Deir az-Zour, said dozens of damaged water stations were gradually returning to service.

Yet engineers say preventing the dam from failing does not necessarily mean the crisis was well managed.

"The decision to increase releases from the Tabqa Dam was technically understandable because exceptionally high upstream inflows had pushed the reservoir close to capacity," Nouar Shamout, senior water resources consultant and former fellow researcher at Chatham House, told The New Arab. "Opening the spillways was necessary to protect the dam itself."

The downstream consequences, however, tell a different story.

"The response was operationally active but predominantly reactive rather than preventive," Shamout said, arguing that Syria still lacks integrated flood forecasting, coordinated river-basin management, early warning systems, and comprehensive floodplain planning.

He argues that the crisis exposed more than ageing infrastructure. "The main lesson is that dam safety cannot be managed separately from downstream flood risk."

According to Shamout, Syria needs a unified Euphrates management system linking dam operators, meteorological services, Civil Defence, local authorities and water utilities while improving real-time communication with upstream Turkey before major releases occur.

Climate change magnifier

The Euphrates flooding illustrates how climate change is colliding with Syria's conflict legacy.

Only months earlier, the country had endured one of its driest years in recent history. Rainfall during the 2024-25 season was reported to be more than 50 percent below average, contributing to one of Syria's weakest wheat harvests on record.

Now the same river has become a source of catastrophic flooding.

"Climate variability has turned the damage caused by war into a continuing systemic risk," Shamout said. "Syria does not simply need reconstructed infrastructure; it needs institutions capable of forecasting extremes, coordinating decisions and managing the Euphrates as one interconnected river basin."

Conflict has deepened those vulnerabilities.

Years of displacement forced many families to settle inside historical floodplains where land was available but inherently exposed to seasonal flooding. Agricultural expansion into these areas further increased the damage once emergency releases began.

"The affected communities should not be blamed," Shamout noted. "People moved into these areas because of war, poverty, insecurity and the absence of safer alternatives."

An Oxfam rapid assessment underscored the scale of the economic shock, finding that nearly 85 percent of surveyed farming households had lost all or part of their agricultural income, while most irrigation systems remained unusable.

Water as a political battlefield

The flooding has also revived one of Syria's oldest geopolitical challenges.

Turkey controls much of the Euphrates' upstream flow through its extensive network of dams under the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), giving Ankara enormous influence over water entering Syria.

Although this year's emergency releases reflected unusually heavy rainfall rather than political pressure, they nevertheless highlighted Syria's dependence on decisions taken upstream.

Recent technical meetings between Syrian and Iraqi officials have sought to revive coordination on Euphrates management and eventually restore trilateral cooperation with Turkey.

For Benedetta Benzoni, a researcher at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, the challenge extends beyond engineering. Syria's new authorities must balance securing strategic water infrastructure while developing co-governance arrangements with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which continue to administer large parts of the Euphrates basin.

Shamout likewise argues that water should become "a platform for cooperation rather than a coercive diplomatic weapon".

But he warns that any future arrangement must be transparent and include Iraq as well as communities in northeastern Syria, rather than reinforcing political dependency or creating new grievances.

Reconstruction's forgotten foundation

The World Bank estimates Syria's reconstruction costs at around $216 billion, with much of the attention focused on rebuilding homes, roads and electricity networks. For Shamout, however, water management should be central to that effort.

"Integrated water-resources planning should be treated as a central framework for recovery, not as a separate environmental programme," he said, pointing to the need for more resilient irrigation systems, early-warning networks, floodplain management and improved groundwater governance.

Recovery will also depend on how authorities respond to communities affected by the floods. "If flood-affected families do not receive timely support, compensation and assistance to restore farmland and livelihoods," Shamout told The New Arab. "Many may conclude that the new authorities are unable or unwilling to meet their basic needs."

That risk is particularly acute in eastern Syria, where years of conflict, displacement and economic hardship have already strained relations between local communities and state institutions. As the country embarks on reconstruction, the Euphrates floods offer an early indication of the governance challenges that climate-related disasters are likely to pose in the years ahead.

Robert Bociaga is a journalist and photographer focusing on international relations and human rights

Follow him on X: @BociagaRobert

Edited by Charlie Hoyle