Flood Compensation Falls Short in Akkar Plain

On February 6, Syria’s Council of Ministers announced the allocation of compensation of SYP 6 billion (USD 455,000 at the official market rate) for those affected by floods in the Akkar Plain region of the Tartous governorate. The plain was hit by rains and floods on January 12, flooding about 1,000 hectares of agricultural land, damaging crops, and ruining around 4,000 plastic greenhouses. Many farmers in the Akkar Plain have faced difficulties proving ownership of their lands, hindering their right to receive compensation.

The Akkar Plain extends on both sides of the Homs-Tartous international road, reaching Tripoli in Lebanon. Dozens of villages and towns, the largest of which is Safsafah, are spread throughout the Plain, through which five rivers run: Al-Kabir Al-Janoubi, Al-Abrash, Al-Arous, Khalifeh, and Abu Al-Ward. The Plain is also rich in groundwater, making agriculture the primary source of income for its 100,000 inhabitants, especially those working in greenhouses. There is an agreement for sharing the waters of the Al-Kabir Al-Janoubi River, signed with the Lebanese side in 2002, which included the construction of a joint dam near Talkalakh in Syria. However, the dam has yet to be implemented.

In the Akkar Plain, farmers face an array of ownership-related obstacles. Farmers and their heirs still commonly own many of the agricultural lands. One of the reasons for the failure to terminate common ownership in the area is the incomplete delimitation and census work that began in 1925. After the government enacted the Agrarian Reform Law No. 161 of 1958, the process of terminating common ownership came to a halt. The policy was revived in 1980 under Legislative Decree No. 166 of 1967, which ordered the consolidation of agricultural lands and the elimination of common ownership. However, with the passing of Law No. 31 of 1980, the government set a cap on private ownership. Efforts to terminate common ownership restarted in 1988 but faced problems related to the transfer of massive expropriated lands in the area from the ownership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Reform to the Ministry of Irrigation. In 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture halted its work to terminate common ownership, and no relevant measures have been taken since. 

There are no reliable figures on the number of farmers who own their land in the Akkar Plain or the sizes of these lands. Agricultural reform and reclamation laws led the state to expropriate large parts of the Plain, exceeding 60 percent of its total area. The government redistributed some of these expropriated lands to farmers between 1958 and 1974, a process that stopped without official justification. It is important to note that not all the lands that farmers received under the agricultural reform law were officially documented in the Land Registry. This is in part due to incomplete delimitation and census work.

Some farmers managed to register their ownership of land they purchased from institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture before sales stopped in 1986. Another group of farmers, known as “social research” recipients, were allocated agricultural reform lands based on studies showing that they owned no other land. This group also managed to register their ownership.

The area also sees many “mughariseh” contracts, which, according to the Agricultural Relations Regulation Law No. 56 of 2004, grant farmers partial land ownership at the end of the contract in exchange for planting and cultivating crops.

It’s also worth noting that there is a widespread practice of leasing state lands, public properties that are unauthorised for occupation, and properties belonging to Waqfs of Tripoli (Lebanon) that the Waqfs of Tartous manage (Waqfs are Islamic charitable endowments). There are disputes over public ownership between the Ministries of Irrigation and Agriculture. 

These complexities in the distribution of ownership, bureaucratic procedures, sporadic expropriation policies, and unfinished delimitation and census work have deprived the owners of the Akkar Plain of rightful flood compensation.

Therefore, on February 6, the Council of Ministers responded to the damages from the floods by relying on two memoranda issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Irrigation. The two memoranda based their compensation valuation on the results of previously formed damage assessment committees tasked with cataloguing agricultural damages in the Tartous governorate. These committees were originally formed under Tartous Governorate Decision No. 961 of 2009 to inventory and evaluate the assets of sewage facilities in Tartous City. It’s unclear how these committees are related or what their expertise is in assessing flood damages in the Akkar Plain.

The state provided compensation to some of those affected, and the costs for rehabilitating infrastructure, services and agricultural roads, as well as drainage clearing, were covered through the “Drought and Natural Disaster Agricultural Production Impact Mitigation Fund,” established by Decree No. 114 of 2011 and linked to the Minister of Agriculture. The fund has a cap on its compensation budget, which depends on its assets and revenues from the public treasury, the General Union of Farmers, donations, and the interests of its funds in banks. According to the decree of its establishment, the compensations provided by the fund cannot exceed 80 percent of its assets. Its mission is to compensate those whose agricultural production is affected by droughts, natural disasters, and other changes in climate conditions.

Local media outlets reported that the farmers were disappointed by the small compensation they received but did not provide information on the value of this compensation. Local media also reported that the government only compensated a minority of farmers, which farmers also lamented. The Minister of Agriculture stated that those who owned their land and had obtained agricultural regulation documents were eligible for compensation.

The Tartous City Council, during its first session in 2024 between January and February, proposed to re-submit a repeated recommendation to the Council of Ministers for the establishment of an Akkar Plain Management and Investment Authority, similar to the authority created for the investment of Al-Ghab Plain. This official authority would be responsible for infrastructure projects, sewage, and water drainage to face floods, especially the annual threat of Al-Kabir Al-Janoubi River flooding, which poses a risk to farmers in the winter season.