In a corner of his house in Salqin, a city in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, agricultural engineer Abdullatif Boubki stacks metal tins filled with olive oil: his land’s harvest from last season. Up until 2012, Boubki relied on olive oil as a source of income. But when the conflict intensified in the Idlib countryside that year, the road was cut off. No longer able to sell his oil, he made a habit of storing it at home. Olive oil is a strategic commodity that does not lose its value, but worry never leaves Boubki. Water —not olives or oil—is his daily concern. He spends hours browsing local Facebook pages and Telegram channels, searching for updates on water availability through the public network in his neighborhood, to know whether he will have to buy a water tanker. Boubki’s story is a microcosm of the broader situation in Syria, which has topped the Global Conflict Risk Index since 2022 as the most drought-prone country in the Mediterranean. But even as the country suffers an acute water crisis, thousands of cubic meters of groundwater are flowing into the global market in the form of olive oil, an export that represents both national pride and a silent depletion of resources. The Standard Differential Vegetation Index (SDI) measures green vegetation cover. It is a measure of vegetation health based on how plants reflect light at specific wavelengths. The map shows high vegetation activity in irrigated and river basins between August 1 and November 11, 2025, reflecting the varying availability of agricultural water across different areas. (Copernicus Maps) The Ministry of Agriculture anticipates an average to low olive season in 2026: at most 412,000 tons of olives yielding an estimated 65,000 tons of oil. At the level of domestic Syrian consumption alone, this amount is less than the annual average of an estimated 2.6 kilograms per person, according to the International Olive Council. This investigation examines the water loss associated with olive oil exports from Syria, exploring how oil has become an undeclared carrier of water out of the country, even as towns and villages struggle to secure their daily needs for drinking and agricultural water. This investigation relies on the concept of “virtual exported water,” which refers to the amount of water used to produce goods exported outside a country’s borders, to highlight the relationship between agricultural trade and water security. It seeks to address the question: How can economic activity contribute to the depletion of national water resources? Olive production in Syria from 2013 to 2022, according to data obtained from the Syrian Source Encyclopedia. Syrian olive oil production, consumption and exports between 1990 and 2024, according to the International Olive Council. Several Syrian provinces are renowned for olive cultivation and oil production, including Idlib, Aleppo, Tartous, Latakia, Hama, Daraa and Reef Dimashq. In Idlib alone, the average annual production is est
Originally reported by Syria Direct. Published on ABN12.