Zabadani’s Trees Victims of Bombing and Siege

The City of Zabadani was once the most prolific producer of apples, pears, peaches, and cherries in Syria. At one time, Zabadani’s farmers exported their crops and distributed them all over Syria. Today, however, the city’s markets are empty of the apples, cherries and peaches that used to fill the fruit stands at this time of year.

Zabadani is 45 kilometers north of Damascus, at an altitude of 1,100 metres. Agriculture is concentrated in the plain of Zabadani, which is comprised of thousands of hectares, and on the mountainsides adjacent to the city.

Now, the Syrian army has artillery positions on those mountains, from which it shells the city and the surrounding fields. And the Syrian army has ringed the city with checkpoints.

Omar, 35, is a farmer who hasn’t seen his land in over a year. He’s worried that if he travels to inspect his property he will meet the fate of other farmers who have been detained, died or disappeared in or on their way to their fields.

Omar is one of Zabadani’s 30,000 residents who depend on agriculture as their main source of income. According to some reports, 80 per cent of the city’s residents live off farming.

But the city’s fields and orchards have been severely affected by the military confrontations between the Syrian army and the armed opposition in the city.

The situation in Zabadani is just an example of the abysmal state of Syria’s agricultural sector due to the on-going conflict. In July, The United Nations warned that Syria’s wheat output decreased by 2.4 million tons, which is 40 per cent less than before the conflict, when annual harvests yielded on average 4 million tons. As a result, wheat prices have more than doubled in some areas of the country. The livestock sector has also suffered, with the UN saying that the country has seen significant declines in the numbers of poultry, sheep and cattle.

Agriculture constituted 25 per cent of Syria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before the conflict, and around 22 per cent of its total exports. Syria was the fourth largest producer of olive oil in the world, and the fourth largest of pistachios. It also produced a variety of vegetables and dairy products.

Due to the conflict, the country now faces an impending food crisis, according to the UN.

Zabadani was one of the first cities to hold solidarity protests with Daraa at the end of March 2011. The protesters sang the praises of their city’s apples, chanting “Zabadani’s apples do not fear tanks.”

In the summer of 2011, the Syrian army stormed the city for the first time, then retreated, only to come back again in October 2011. It was the first city to be completely taken over by the armed opposition, in January 2012. After a fierce battle, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops recaptured it in February 2012.

Assad’s troops continue to lay siege to the city, shelling the old sector daily. Various factions belonging to the Free Syrian Army fight back, such as Free Sham, Martyrs of Justice, and Hamza Bin Abd el-Moutaleb.

Despite the violence and conflict, some farmers insist on continuing to tend their fields and orchards. Many of them have met terrible fates.

Salah Eddine Bourhan, 73, was on his way to his property in mid-May 2012 when Syrian government soldiers stopped him at the Aqaba checkpoint north of the city. Local activists allege that the soldiers at the checkpoint beat the farmer to death.

According to the Local Coordination Committees in Zabadani, Bourhan’s son was arrested at the same checkpoint when he went to retrieve his father’s corpse, and his fate is still unknown.

In Zabadani, the land and trees are the most valuable possessions of farmers and their families. If they are damaged then the fruit of years of their labour is lost.

Adnan, 64, was one of those farmers who suffered such losses in February 2012. At that time, Assad’s tanks swept through large swathes of farmland and orchards, destroying them, after the armed opposition closed the main roads into the city in January 2012.

Adnan lost his trees in the attack. His daughter, 21-year-old Mona, says it destroyed her father.

“Four years ago we discovered that my father has cancer, but he showed no symptoms of the disease until the tanks destroyed many of the trees in our fields. He died of grief 20 days later,” said Mona.

“Trees don’t bear fruit overnight,” said Omar, another Zabadani farmer. “Apple trees, for instance, need 10 years to grow into a cash crop. If they die, it will take the farmer another lifetime to see them bear fruit again.”

Omar believes that this investment of time and money is what leads farmers and their families to suffer the humiliation inflicted upon them by soldiers at checkpoints on the way to their orchards, and to risk shelling as they work their fields.

13 year-old Nour lost her family in February this year after a shell landed near them in a field.

“My brother, my mother and I woke up in the morning to go to the field with my father to help him harvest the winter cabbages. As soon as we arrived, a shell killed my father and wounded my mother,” Nour said.

“My mother told me to call for help immediately. She barely finished her sentence when another shell fell and killed her and my brother. I was lightly wounded and crawled to look for help. As soon as I found someone in the distance, another shell fell and blew up [the man’s] body in front of me,” she added.

After Nour’s family was killed, no one dared to go to their fields in the plain or in the mountain region again. The city’s elders negotiated with the army to reach a limited truce where they would stop the shelling in return for an end to the Free Syrian Army’s attacks on the checkpoints around the city. The truce was aimed to alleviate the pressure on civilians and allow farmers the opportunity to tend to their fields.

The truce began on April 14, 2013, and lasted a whole month until it was broken on May 14.

“The truce did more bad than good to the farmers. After they bought hoses to water their crops, the truce was broken and they lost their money and their land,” said Fares Mohammad, a member of one of Zabadani’s Local Coordination Committees.

Mahmoud, a farmer, says the Syrian army has adopted a new policy of threatening to burn the city’s farmland and orchards in an effort to pressure the city’s residents into expelling the Free Syrian Army. Mahmoud, who saw some of the burnt fields,  now fights with the Free Syrian Army.

Many farmers have been forced to support their families with their savings.  Omar is one such farmer.

“Zabadani’s residents still live by old rural customs built on saving their pennies for a rainy day,” he said. “These customs have saved them from having to ask for help or charity. Due to the siege and the brutal shelling, many of the city’s residents have also begun to plant the semi-destroyed gardens of their houses and use them to raise livestock.”