The Asad regime and its apologists propagated that the Syrian Revolution of March 2011 was triggered by the drought that affected the breadbasket of the country’s Northeast region between 2006 and 2010, and by the consequent serious migration of farmers to urban centres.
This claim is false. The entirety of the Eastern Mediterranean, not only Syria, suffered the same drought conditions during the same period, but it was only Syria that erupted in revolution.
In what follows, I will refute this falsehood, then I will address what really caused Syria’s Revolution.
The Drought
The ups and downs in seasonal rainfall in Syria are normal. The year 2008, had a major drop in wheat production, from 4 million tons in 2007 to 2.1 million tons in 2008. However, the following year, 2009, wheat production jumped to 3.6 million tons, restoring most the drop suffered one year earlier. In 2010, the volume was maintained at 3.6 million tons. In the year of the revolution, 2011, production increased to 3.850 million tons, almost the level of 2007. The following table shows Syria’s wheat production from 2001 to 2011.[1]
Syria’s wheat production from 2001 to 2011
| Market Year | Production (1000 MT) | Growth Rate |
| 2001 | 4,745 | 52.82 % |
| 2002 | 4,775 | 0.63 % |
| 2003 | 4,913 | 2.89 % |
| 2004 | 4,537 | -7.65 % |
| 2005 | 4,669 | 2.91 % |
| 2006 | 4,200 | -10.04 % |
| 2007 | 4,041 | -3.79 % |
| 2008 | 2,139 | -47.07 % |
| 2009 | 3,600 | 68.30 % |
| 2010 | 3,600 | 0.00 % |
| 2011 | 3,850 | 6.94 % |
Migration
Migration from Syria’s rural areas to urban centres had been persistent since the army’s 1963 coup d’état. The putsch replaced Syria’s legitimate democratically elected parliament, president, and cabinet by a military dictatorship of the sons of the rural communities. To secure the new regime’s control over the multi-racial, multi-cultural Syria, military officers and civilian officials of previous administrations were summarily dismissed from service. The expulsions was wholesale. It even reached the Sunni cadets in the Homs Military Academy. Students in their early twenties were fired to make room for Alawite recruits from the villages of the mountainous Alawite region on the Mediterranean Coast. The army units in and around the Capital Damascus had to become totally loyal to Hafiz Asad and his immediate family.
The next table shows that migration from the rural areas to urban centres had been consistent over the 45 years prior to the 2008 drought year. It shows that the 2008 drought did not raise the level of migration from rural to urban Syria during the two years since the drought and up to the March 2011 Revolution.
Percentage of Syria’s rural population to total population[2]
| 1963 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2015 |
| 61.31 | 56.66 | 53.29 | 51.07 | 48.05 | 45:13 | 44.76 | 44.40 | 45.42 | 47.83 |
The table shows that the ratio of the rural population to total population had been declining steadily from 61.31% in 1963 to 45.13% in 2008, an average of 0.36% per year[3] and that between 2008 and 2010, the ratio remained unchanged.[4]
It is noteworthy, however, that the migration trend was reversed shortly after the Revolution had started. Between 2011 and 2015, city dwellers sought refuge in rural areas to escape Asad’s barrel bombs over Aleppo, Homs, and Hama, among others. In the suburbs of Damascus, even chemical weapons were used. On August 21, 2013, Asad bombed the verdant Ghouta District outside Damascus with Sarin gas, killing 1,400 people.
What caused the 2011 Syrian Revolution?
Since it was neither the drought nor migration that caused the Syrian Revolution of 2011, what did?
The answer is forty years of abuse (1971 – 2011) inflicted upon most of Syria’s citizens, especially, the 80% Sunni majority by a criminal enterprise led by Hafiz Asad and his son Bashar, aided by a cabal of subservient Alawite generals.
Having no legitimacy or support among the Sunni majority, the Asads 10% Alawite minority suffered from siege mentality. A sectarian coalition of mutual dependency between the Asad clan and the generals was natural.
Ruthless and deceitful, Hafiz, a 32-year-old decommissioned captain, became President in 1971. He eliminated his five compatriots in the March 8, 1963 military putsch that brought them to power. Five uncontested farcical referendums with near 100% approvals were supposed to legitimate an illegitimate president until he died on June 10, 2000. The son produced similar theatrics, until he fled Syria to Moscow on December 8, 2024, leaving behind a devastated land, possibly beyond the worst destruction Syria had ever suffered over the long sweep of history, including that, which the Mongols left behind at the hands of Hulagu in 1260.
The 2011 Revolution was caused by a cruel non-representative, non-participatory, and non-transparent clique.
The revolution was caused by multi security forces, entirely led by Alawite generals and manned by 120,000 sadistic soldiers.[5] At the slightest whiff of suspicion, citizens were subjected to the most horrific torture methods imaginable.[6]
While the two Asads appointed Sunni politicians to high office, from Prime Minister to Defense Minister and others in between, none of such functionaries had one iota of real power. An Alawite second lieutenant could order any Sunni cabinet minister around.
The Revolution was caused by the infamous prisons of Mazzeh (in Damascus), Sydnaya (near Damascus), and Tadmor (Palmyra, near Homs). In these Slaughterhouses, savages crushed the bones of whoever was suspected of disobedience to the dictator. It was the Tadmor massacre on June 26, 1980, led by Rif’at Asad, Hafiz’s brother, that killed in cold blood 500 helpless Sunni inmates with machine guns and hand grenades.[7] It was the three-week beastly bombardment from the air and the ground, which was led, again, by Rif’at that demolished much of Hama, a city of around 200,000 inhabitants, in revenge for an uprising in February 1982 by the Muslim Brotherhood. Rif’at boasted of killing 36,000 Syrians in Hama.[8]
The Revolution was caused by corruption, sleaze, and theft by the ruling class. A narrow group from religious minorities plus Sunni merchants broke the law with impunity. Patron-client associations cascaded down through all ranks. The Asads were the patrons in-chief. The modest official salaries of the military and security commanders were too meager to justify the risk of protecting an illegitimate corrupt regime. So, enriching the ruling group illegally without impunity became the order of the day. For a business to flourish, the owner had to partner with a high-ranking Alawite officer, preferably in the intelligence services. Ordinary citizens had to bribe their way up and down the bureaucracy, be it to expedite the issuance of a passport, a birth certificate, or avoiding a traffic ticket.
For more on the Asad Clan’s misrule see my article in this Website: In the Middle East, Religious Minorities Must Not Rule Over the Religious Majority: The Case of Syria.
[1] Index Mundi, “Syrian Arab Republic Wheat Production by Year, as Sourced from United States Department of Agriculture”,
https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=sy&commodity=wheat&graph=production
[2] Macrotrends, Syrian Arab Republic rural population,
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/syr/syrian-arab-republic/rural-population
[3] 61.31% – 45.13% = 16.18% / 45 years = 0.36%.
[4] 45.13% – 44.40% = 0.73% / 2 years = 0.365%.
[5] “Syrian security branches and Persons in charge”, Syrian Network of Human Rights, https://snhr.org/public_html/wp-content/pdf/english/Syrian_security_branches_and_Persons_in_charge_en.pdf
[6] GlobalSecurity.org, “Syria Intelligence & Security Agencies”, https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/syria/intro.htm
[7] Patrick Seale, Assad, the Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995), P. 329.
[8] Adrian Bloomfield, “Maher Assad: Profile of the Syrian President’s Feared Brother,” The Telegraph, (June 9, 2011),