Soil salinization is a complex and expanding crisis in rural Raqqa, where fields are becoming unusable and farmers have limited means to respond. The post White earth: Soil salinization threatens farming in Raqqa’s Euphrates river basin appeared first on Syria Direct.
Soil salinization is a complex and expanding crisis in rural Raqqa, where fields are becoming unusable and farmers have limited means to respond.
26 May 2026
PARIS — Year by year, the soil of Muhammad Abu Jumaa’s land on the outskirts of Raqqa’s al-Mansoura village grows more saline. At one of his farms, five of 20 dunams are now unusable land, locally referred to as nazaz—land where water accumulates, salts build up and little grows.
Severely degraded fields like Abu Jumaa’s appear outwardly moist and muddy, covered with a white crust. Nazaz land has reached an advanced stage of soil salinization, a buildup of salts in the soil that, over time, makes it increasingly difficult to grow crops.
The severity of salinization in Abu Jumaa’s remaining usable land varies, but limits what he can successfully grow, the farmer told Syria Direct.
Soil samples taken in the area in recent years produced readings of between 4,000 and 6,000 microSiemens per centimeter (μS/cm), agricultural engineer Muhammad Noor al-Ibrahim told Syria Direct. These levels indicate saline soil, which impacts the productivity of a number of crops.
Al-Ibrahim, who specializes in agricultural land restoration, previously conducted environmental monitoring in the area under the Environment Authority of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which administered Raqqa province before the Syrian government took control this past January.
The problem of soil salinization goes beyond reduced agricultural productivity, pointing to a complex crisis that threatens the very foundation of agriculture—the soil itself—in Raqqa farming communities near the banks of the Euphrates River, which originates in Turkey and passes through northeastern Syria before flowing into Iraq.
Falling Euphrates water levels, agricultural drainage networks in disrepair and increased reliance on high-salinity well water—combined with years of drought, rising temperatures and increased evaporation—fuel the gradual buildup of salts on the surface of the soil, ultimately taking it out of cultivation.
A video screenshot shows a white layer of salt on the surface of farmland in the Raqqa countryside, 21/1/2026 (Yaman al-Sayed/YouTube)
“When you see nazaz land, you think it is waterlogged. It isn’t. The soil is as light as sand, and a layer of white salt appears on it,” said Issa al-Yousef, a farmer from al-Mansoura.
Al-Yousef makes his living farming land he inherited from his father more than 15 years ago. In recent years, however, he has primarily grown winter crops fed by the rain, which helps “wash salts from the soil,” he told Syria Direct. A strong rainy season can bode well for the rest of the year, as “land flooded with water in the winter encourages us to grow summer crops, such as cotton.”
Raqqa farmland relies on agricultural drainage networks that work to remove saline water from the soil—whether through small surface channels or subsurface tile drainage systems that channel excess water away through small holes filled with gravel and perforated pipes, Raqqa agricultural engineer Bashar Khalaf al-Khamri explained.
The soil, which was previously rehabilitated through irrigation and agricultural drainage networks, is naturally relatively saline and calcareous, containing calcium carbonate. With years of poor maintenance, failing drainage systems and rising groundwater levels, dissolved salts rise once more to the surface of the soil, especially with increased evaporation.
As fields are repeatedly irrigated with water from brackish wells or agricultural channels, salts accumulate in the surface layer, preventing plants from fully absorbing water and nutrients. In the early stages of soil salinization, leaves yellow and crops die. Eventually, only salt-resistant crops such as barley can be grown, and sometimes nothing at all.
Al-Yousef has been grappling with soil salinization for more than a decade. Some land in his village of al-Mansoura “became unusable six years ago,” he said. “Its owners abandoned it, and nobody wants to rent or rehabilitate it.”
“As time goes by, the problem is getting worse. The area of unused land is spreading, and the number of farmers shrinks every year,” he added.
Issa al-Issa, the head of the Raqqa Farmers Union, described soil salinization as “an acute environmental and agricultural crisis, one of the most serious manifestations of desertification, which threatens the agricultural fertility of the region.” He noted that the severity of salinization varies between different plots of land.
Farmers’ livelihoods are directly impacted, as “after financing their agricultural projects through seeds, fertilizers and labor—through cash or loans—they do not receive a lucrative return from nazaz land, incur great losses and cannot pay their debts,” al-Issa told Syria Direct.
Areas in purple show evidence of reduced vegetation cover and increased soil exposure south of Raqqa’s al-Mansoura village between 2017 and 2026 (Google Earth Engine/Syria Direct)
An analysis of satellite images, conducted via the Google Earth Engine platform, which uses artificial intelligence tools, appears to show an expansion in indicators of soil degradation south of Raqqa’s al-Mansoura village between 2017 and 2026.
The analysis was based on a comparison of images taken during the same farming season, using spectral indices that measure vegetation density, soil moisture and surface exposure, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Bare Soil Index (BSI).
The purple spots in the image above represent areas where indicators associated with reduced vegetation cover and increased soil exposure have increased compared to 2017. This indicates a possible deterioration in soil properties, and intersects with the salinization process described by farmers.
While these indicators are not, in themselves, direct evidence of salinization, they are used to scientifically monitor areas most vulnerable to soil degradation and lost productivity.
The comparison also shows that signs of degradation are no longer confined to the outer edges of agricultural land, but extend into the fields themselves in the form of scattered patches and concentrated clusters, in a pattern that is consistent with the testimonies of farmers and agricultural engineers who spoke of declining yields and portions of land falling out of production in recent years.
Over long years of war and the accompanying shortage and expense of fuel needed to operate water pumps, alongside reduced maintenance and disruption of irrigation and drainage networks, the water sources used by many farmers in Raqqa changed.
As the supply of water from the Euphrates River declined and irrigation canals went out of service, farmers turned to surface wells, despite their high salinity and cost. Others restored to reusing drainage water to irrigate their land a second time, depositing dissolved salts back into the soil.
“There was a salinization problem when we were using the Euphrates water, which was worsened by the use of well water, but farmers were forced to use it because the river water no longer came,” Abu Jumaa explained.
“Wrong practices by farmers” made salinization worse, al-Yousef said. He is among those who used brackish well water after irrigation networks were disrupted.
“There are organic materials and fertilizers that alleviate salinization and treat the soil, but our economic conditions and poor returns [from farming] prevent us from using them,” he added.
“There was a drainage channel on our land, like a small ditch surrounding the field. When we watered the land through flood irrigation, excess water with the salts flowed into the channel and from it to the main drains outside the land,” al-Yousef explained. But these networks “broke down,” largely due to neglect, during the war.
Agricultural engineer al-Khamri explained further, noting “the problem is an old one in Raqqa.” Some farmers installed field drainage “in 2009, and tried to control it, but the problem worsened on lands without this system, and some of them went out of service.”
Over the years, al-Khamri has worked with a number of local and international organizations focused on “clearing the main field drains on thousands of kilometers, but the problem is large and extensive.”
Agricultural drainage channels need regular maintenance and continuous cleaning every three or four years, “because of the intensive growth of [reeds and water grasses], which clog the drains and return water to the fields,” al-Khamri added. This, alongside a rising groundwater level, “leads to the nazaz process, especially with high temperatures and increased evaporation.”
On top of that, “the land here is calcareous and saline, sometimes with water two meters below or even on the surface of the soil,” he added.
The soil salinization worsened over the past five years in particular, after some farmers, facing drought and water scarcity, attempted to create barriers to trap water on their lands and prevent it from draining off.
“With intense evaporation, salts rise to the surface of the soil, especially in drought years, causing salinization,” explained al-Ibrahim, the agricultural engineer specialized in land restoration. “The use of agricultural drainage water is one of the most dangerous practices that happened, because using it returns high concentrations of salts to the ground.”
“Agricultural irrigation and drainage networks in Raqqa need rehabilitation, because they have not been maintained for 10 years,” according to Ahmad al-Ajaji, Raqqa’s Director of Water Resources. He estimated that around 70 percent of drains and agricultural channels need cleaning.
“We started to maintain irrigation and drainage networks immediately after the liberation,” al-Ajaji added, referring to the Syrian government taking control of Raqqa from the AANES this past January. “We have a plan to clear thousands of kilometers of drains and channels using heavy equipment,” he added, noting machinery “has been distributed to five sectors, and the plan includes starting with the main drainage channels, followed by the secondary and subsidiary ones.”
Al-Ajaji expects “it will take around a full year to restore the network and return agricultural rehabilitation projects to their regulatory status.” Once that happens, farmers can “use the water from suitable irrigation canals, and stop using wells that are not suitable for agriculture.”
As an emergency measure, farmers can submit a request to the directorate to “construct a deep interceptor drain to draw excess surface water from the soil and channel it outside the field, lowering the water table and reducing salinization,” al-Ajaji said. Once drains are installed, “the farmer should irrigate the land three times without planting any crops, in order to flush salts out through the drain, which helps mitigate the problem,” he added.
Close-up satellite images of fields south of al-Mansoura show clear variation within the same fields. Large areas appear lighter in color and more exposed than healthy cultivated sections, while irregular patches also appear scattered inside the fields.
A close-up satellite view of fields south of Raqqa’s al-Mansoura village in 2026. (Google Earth Engine/Syria Direct)
When spectral analysis was applied to the same image, these areas appeared in purple, indicating sites where vegetation cover declined and exposed soil increased over the past several years.
Purple highlights areas where vegetation cover declined and exposed soil increased between 2017 and 2026. (Google Earth Engine/Syria Direct)
As the salinization problem grows worse, choosing crops and following a crop rotation is no longer possible for many farmers, who must instead select suitable varieties that can withstand the increasingly salty soil. Wheat, cotton and vegetable crops have declined, leaving barley as virtually the only successful crop that can be grown on much of the local farmland.
“Wheat and cotton grow, but the yield is poor. Barley is one of the most salt-tolerant crops,” farmer Abu Jumaa said.
Growing barley is one way to adapt to the soil conditions, but “the shrinking range of crops directly impacts the food and economic security of the population,” al-Ibrahim said. “Growers rely on various crops to meet their own needs or sell.”
Farmers’ inability to vary what they grow or cultivate summer crops such as cotton further exhausts the soil, which does not regain its balance without more diverse crop rotations, farmer al-Yousef added. While his land needs a crop rotation, he “cannot do that because it would mean a financial loss.”
“My cultivation has been limited to barley and wheat,” he added. The exception was three years ago, when the rains were good and some of his land “flooded,” he tried to return to growing cotton. Many farmers rely on the winter season “because of the salinity of the soil, the shrinking list of crops and high growing costs.”
The year he planted cotton, al-Yousef “watered the land three times until the seeds sprouted, and when the plants were an inch tall they died due to the salinity,” he said.
Agricultural engineer al-Khamri warned against relying solely on barley, despite its relative tolerance to salty soils, because it does not address the root of the problem. “Barley may resist salinity for a year or two, but in the end the land will go out of service, especially if it becomes nazaz land,” he said.
Some farmers are working to maintain their land and slow its deterioration through basic means: deep plowing or leaving it for rain-fed farming, relying on rainfall to wash the surface of the soil, as in the case of al-Yousef. He said some of his land suffering from salinization saw a relative improvement once he stopped growing on it for three years, combined with deep tilling. This year, “farming conditions were good there,” he said.
Still, these attempts can do little compared to the more costly interventions needed to address saline soils. “We know organic fertilizer is beneficial, and that saline soil requires [both] deep tilling and fertilizer, but this is beyond most farmers’ abilities,” al-Yousef said. A single dunam of land—1,000 square meters—requires between three and five meters of fertilizer, which he cannot afford for his own 10 hectares (100 dunams) of land.
A video of farmer Issa al-Yousef’s land south of Raqqa’s al-Mansoura village shows areas that are white and cracked, as well as areas where crops have not grown in April 2026 (Issa al-Yousef)
As the pace of soil salinization accelerates, Raqqa farmers are confronting the problem without basic tools for understanding and managing it. Soil and water analyses are largely not available, leaving them to make their decisions based on visual observations or trial and error.
“No one has visited us to offer guidance or solutions. You are the first person to speak with us about this problem,” Abu Jumaa told Syria Direct’s reporter. Wider access to agricultural laboratories and testing would help farmers accurately determine the salinity levels of their soil, knowledge needed to determine how much fertilizer to add.
“Because there are no labs, we use fertilizers arbitrarily, which causes an increase in soil salinity,” Abu Jumaa added. Most farmers use “urea fertilizer, and if the salinity is high, it increases it. We should use ammonium sulfate fertilizer in cases of advanced salinization, since it helps break down salinity, but this cannot be determined without laboratory analysis.”
Agricultural engineer al-Khamri agreed that the absence of laboratory analysis drives farmers to use water sources or agricultural practices that could degrade the soil faster. Some unknowingly irrigate their land with high salinity water on the basis of limited experience. Such efforts may initially succeed with barley, “before the land goes out of service in just a few years,” he warned.
“Holding awareness workshops for farmers would help resolve 70 percent of the problem, once farmers understand how salinization happens and change their practices,” al-Ibrahim said.
Before the war, Raqqa farmers “received support and guidance from the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agricultural Extension Department and international organizations working on land rehabilitation, as well as through the Farmers Union, which held educational, awareness and extension courses,” al-Issa said. He stressed the importance of “revitalizing the role of agricultural extension and establishing intensive, continuous training courses to reach the widest possible segment of farmers.”
The Raqqa Agricultural Directorate has yet to hold any workshops for farmers on the topic of salinization, but “directed the extension units to work to raise farmers’ awareness of this problem,” said Ibrahim Ramadan al-Ibrahim, head of the directorate’s Agricultural Affairs and Prevention Department. He added that the Syrian government only regained control of Raqqa city this past January, and that the directorate has had little time to begin its work.
Directorate staff have met with “international and local organizations to combat salinization, and we asked for help with clearing drainage channels as an emergency measure,” al-Ibrahim told Syria Direct.
Raqqa farmers are calling for “irrigation networks to be maintained and reeds cleared from drainage channels in order to prevent water from building up within fields, as well as immediate support for and provision of the agricultural diesel (mazot) needed to run irrigation pumps and lower growing costs,” al-Jumaa said.
A white layer of salt covers part of Issa al-Yousef’s land in the Raqqa countryside in April 2026 (Issa al-Yousef)
“When we came in, the wheat and barley crops had already been planted, so farmers did not benefit from the interest-free loan provided by the government, through which they can obtain seeds and fertilizers at cost before repaying it at the end of the season,” said al-Ibrahim from the directorate. The only part of Raqqa where farmers received such loans was the Maadan district, which was already controlled by the government when winter crops were planted, he added.
Al-Ibrahim also revealed that the Raqqa Agriculture Directorate is working to establish an agricultural laboratory in the province, so water and soil samples would no longer need to be sent to Damascus for testing.
Despite the spread of salinization, rehabilitating the land remains possible, provided there is coordinated intervention—something that requires costs few local farmers can afford. The process starts with reactivating agricultural drainage systems, the infrastructure that previously ensured the balance of the soil, agricultural engineers al-Khamri and al-Ibrahim said.
“Clearing drainage and irrigation channels is the first step towards rehabilitation,” al-Khamri said, explaining that this involves removing weeds and sediment to restore water flow and lower the water table in the soil.
One such project was implemented in Raqqa five years ago for “land completely out of service that people had abandoned,” al-Khamri recounted. “We cleared the drainage channels, the groundwater level dropped and the next year the land was cultivated and back in production.”
However, in some cases “it may be too late,” al-Khamri added. Once “the land reaches an advanced stage of nazaz, rehabilitation becomes expensive and plants may not succeed.” This was the fate of many agricultural rehabilitation projects in Raqqa, he said.
Agricultural engineer al-Ibrahim said the soil can still be rehabilitated “if basic conditions are met, most importantly resuming maintenance and operation services, regulating water management and changing farming practices.” But because these solutions are tied to infrastructure and public resources, they “require government efforts,” he noted.
Al-Khamri advised farmers to construct field drainage systems and “follow a crop rotation that includes a legume, since legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil and increase its fertility, while initially avoiding crops that deplete the land and stress the soil,” alongside the use of “organic fertilizer to improve soil quality.”
He warned against the use of urea fertilizer “in lands with high salinity, except in very small quantities.” The local soil is “naturally poor in organic matter,” he added. “It is calcareous, but the nature of the lime in it is complex, and exists in a form that plants cannot absorb. We must add organic materials that convert it from its complex form to a simpler form that plants can use.”
For farmer Abu Jumaa, these measures—from installing subsurface drainage systems to adding organic matter—remain “costly and expensive, and we can no longer afford them,” he said.
Still, if no action is taken, the future may bring ever more harsh consequences, as soil salinization persists and spreads, taking more land out of cultivation. If left unchecked, the process could change the face of the very agriculture for which Raqqa has long been known.
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
Citing a Syrian official, Reuters reported on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, that Syrian authorities had found remnants of the secret […] The post Syria Finds Remnants of Assad Chemical Program appeared first on Enab Baladi.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued Decree No. 135 of 2026 on Tuesday, May 26, granting pensioners a 30% increase in […] The post Decree Raises Pensions in Syria by 30% appeared first on Enab Baladi.
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Nechirvan Barzani on Tuesday met with Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander in Chief Mazloum Abdi in the regional capital, Erbil, where both sides stressed the importance of dialogue and understanding among Kurdish parties
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – A group of seven Australian women and 12 children linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) are preparing to return to Australia from northeastern Syria, Australian authorities said on Tuesday, marking the second repatriation group this month. Australian Home Affairs Minist
