Food Not Bombs

My friend Arn Menconi has been writing about Syria for a few years now. I was aching for the Syrians before. Now, I’m feeling their pain.

I read a piece in 2012. It made total sense to me.

The cliff note is that the crisis in Syria roots to climate change. 5 years of drought caused the crops to dry up. Syrians lost income, they were hungry. So they took to the streets.

Here’s the piece:

The Other Arab Spring

From the piece:

“Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime,” write Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, in a report for their Center for Climate and Security in Washington. “However, that’s not the whole story. The past few years have seen a number of significant social, economic, environmental and climatic changes in Syria that have eroded the social contract between citizen and government. … If the international community and future policy makers in Syria are to address and resolve the drivers of unrest in the country, these changes will have to be better explored.”

From 2006-11, they note, up to 60 percent of Syria’s land experienced one of the worst droughts and most severe set of crop failures in its history. “According to a special case study from last year’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, of the most vulnerable Syrians dependent on agriculture, particularly in the northeast governorate of Hassakeh (but also in the south), ‘nearly 75 percent … suffered total crop failure.’ Herders in the northeast lost around 85 percent of their livestock, affecting 1.3 million people.” The United Nations reported that more than 800,000 Syrians had their livelihoods wiped out by these droughts, and many were forced to move to the cities to find work — adding to the burdens of already incompetent government.

“If climate projections stay on their current path, the drought situation in North Africa and the Middle East is going to get progressively worse, and you will end up witnessing cycle after cycle of instability that may be the impetus for future authoritarian responses,” argues Femia. “There are a few ways that the U.S. can be on the right side of history in the Arab world. One is to enthusiastically and robustly support democratic movements.” The other is to invest in climate-adaptive infrastructure and improvements in water management — to make these countries more resilient in an age of disruptive climate change.

Any informed person can see how climate change ignited unrest.

It makes no sense to be pro-life then stand by idle while a million or more Syrians are murdered. Christians, people of faith should start practicing what they preach, put their selfish commitment to the 2nd Amendment and pro-life aside,  and stand with the Syrians. Speak out against the bombings, the murders of innocent people, and help the Syrians rebuild their soil. Not just Christians and people of faith, anyone with a heart.

Please, people. Food Not Bombs.