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Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/06/demography-is-destiny-in-syria
Demography Is Destiny in Syria
(American Spectator) Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Oskar Svadkovsky - The escalation in Syria took by surprise only the people who never bothered to examine Syria's population pyramid. In the early 1970s, the trade and use of contraceptives in Syria were officially banned. Only in recent years has the regime introduced some measure of family planning, but by now the sheer amount of population momentum accumulated in previous decades has kept the population swelling to new highs. At the same time, during the last decade climate change has hit the region, with shifts in rain patterns leading to prolonged droughts that have devastated Syrian agriculture. Whole villages have been abandoned, while slums around Syrian cities have been swelling with hundreds of thousands of climate refugees.