A Farmer Returns To His Land In Syria

Abu Khaled*, 58, was on the verge of selling his land. After more than a decade of displacement, he had returned to Taseel, in the western countryside of Dar’a, to find his home stripped bare and his olive trees uprooted, and years of drought had turned what remained into a growing debt. Today, with support from Acted, he is farming again.

Um Khaled helps her husband from their home in Taseel — a routine of daily support that has carried him through years of hardship.

A life shaped by displacement

Mahmoud Hassan, 58, known to his community as Abu Khaled, was born with a congenital mobility disability that requires him to use crutches or a wheelchair, but it never kept him from working. Before the conflict, he was a government employee who also cultivated seven dunams of land, growing vegetables among his planted olive trees — a livelihood that supported his family of nine.

I used to work and work my land, and it was giving good… We were alive and well.

Abu Khaled

When protests broke out in Dar’a in 2011, he faced growing harassment on his way to work, related both to his disability and to his home region. In 2013, after being threatened with imprisonment, he made the difficult decision to leave. He and his family spent the following years in refugee camps near the Jordanian border, living on humanitarian assistance and slowly losing what they had. Some of his children eventually left in search of work elsewhere.

When the conflict subsided in 2024, Abu Khaled returned to Taseel, only to find his home vandalised and stripped bare. His land was no better off: the olive trees had been uprooted, and the irrigation network he once relied on had been stolen.

I went to the land… I didn’t find a tree, all the olives are uprooted and the irrigation nets are stolen… I felt like I had lost everything.

Abu Khaled

Starting over, together

Despite everything, Abu Khaled refused to let go of what remained. Each morning, his wife, Um Khaled, helped him into his wheelchair and pushed him out to the land to check on it and tend to whatever crops had survived. She would gather the diseased leaves from his plants and bring them to a local agronomist so he could work out how to treat them and save what he could.

My wife was my support… She would help me with everything, she would take me to the land and stay with me.

Abu Khaled

The Acted team checks in with Abu Khaled at his home as part of regular follow-up visits to support the implementation of his business plan.

But drought and the rising cost of agricultural inputs kept working against him, turning the land from a source of income into a growing debt. He had reached the point of seriously considering selling it when Abu Adam, the head of the local farmers’ association, told him about a new Acted programme supporting farmers in the area.

Abu Khaled and his wife went together to register. At the registration point, the Acted team’s attentiveness to his situation left an impression — his request was recorded and he was told a team would follow up in person. Weeks later, they visited his home and his land to see his situation for themselves. Then came the call.

They called me in the morning and told me I have been selected for the grant… That’s when I felt like I was breathing again.

Abu Khaled

Standing on his own again

For Abu Khaled, the support marked a genuine turning point. A cash grant, alongside business management and technical training from Acted, has enabled him to reinvest in the land he and his wife fought to keep, improve production and begin easing the financial burden that had built up over years of loss, even as he continues to manage the daily challenges of his disability.

I felt that there are people who are still standing with me… I could get back on my feet again.

Abu Khaled

Abu Khaled and his wife, Um Khaled, walk their land with the Acted team in Taseel, Dar’a.

Today, Abu Khaled is putting his business plan into practice, and he no longer sees his land as the burden it had become. For a man who lost his home, his income and, for a time, his hope, the land in Taseel is once again something worth showing up for every morning.

Abu Khaled’s story reflects the pressures facing many farmers in Taseel, where around 1,000 households depend on a single irrigation canal fed by the Taseel dam. Years of drought, damaged infrastructure and unequal access to water have made farming increasingly precarious, hitting hardest those who already had the least to fall back on.

Through a livelihoods programme reaching around 500 farmers in the area, Acted is providing cash grants and business and technical training to farmers struggling to access irrigation water. The programme is also repairing damaged canals and water control valves along the shared irrigation network, and supporting the formation of a community-led Water Management Committee to distribute water from the Taseel dam more fairly and ease the tensions that had built up between farmers competing for a shrinking resource.

This project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

1,000

households in Taseel depend on a single 14-km irrigation canal

500

farmers supported by the programme

*The beneficiary’s name has been changed to protect their privacy.