Movie Review: Dwindling Drops in the Sand

It all started on vacation during a drive through Damascus. Sama Wareh’s uncle thought aloud to himself about God’s mercy, Syria and droughts. It grew into self-funded vacations to Syria, ritual oaths that she wasn’t a spy in return for interviews and a little sprint from the Syrian Secret Service. It resulted in a Masters’ thesis documentary, “Dwindling Drops In the Sand” (DDS), which won the Best Thesis Award in Wareh’s graduate class of environmental studies at Cal State Fullerton.

“DDS” shows you the cracks in Syrian soil, the retardation of the forests and the disappearance of rivers. It is a simple documentary by a student film maker, but despite its simplicity, it connects its audience with the human aspects of environmental changes. It touches softly on the Syrian country and the 4,000 years of continuous life within its capital of Damascus. “DDS” asks you to not forget this side and how, through drought, pollution and carelessness toward the environment, there may soon be an end to this land.

The water problems’ root causes are shrouded by purposely distracting issues, such as the Palestinian struggle, human rights’ violations, and an ethnic rivalry between Persians and Arabs. Wareh strategically chooses to ignore these and other similar deterring issues in her documentary, allowing us to see a more well-informed global view in which natural resources are being depleted causing tensions to rise.

To understand the Middle Eastern, especially Syrian, water issues and territorial struggles, one must understand the following:

-Israel invaded Syria in 1967 and took over the Golan Heights including Lake Tiberias, one of the major water sources for southern Syria.

-Turkey has built the largest damn in the world on the Euphrates; trapping much of the Euphrates’ water in a mountain range in Turkey before it gets to Syria.

-The United States invaded Iraq causing the Syrian population to grow by 700,000 refugees onto an already maxed out water supply.

- Sometimes water in Damascus is only on a couple of hours a day.

-There is a major drought on top of this.

Water is both symbolically and literally sinking away from the people of Syria. It was once only 10 meters from topsoil a generation ago, when Wareh’s grandparents could simply dig for it with their hands and shovels. It is now 300 meters from topsoil.

According to Wareh, the reality is that Syria used to be a place of plentiful water and the forests took up 30 percent of the total land mass; today, the forest takes up 3 percent of Syria. This has caused governments in the Middle East to start thinking that water wars may be necessary and not just a good movie plot.

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Read Wareh’s interview with Cal State Fullerton’s Public Affairs Office.