dry up, entire villages are sometimes abandoned.

Many countries in the region are already experiencing significant and growing internal migration as a result of increasingly severe and prolonged drought. In Iran, people — mostly in rural communities — are leaving areas of Khuzestan, Isfahan, and Sistan and Baluchistan to find work and homes in areas with more water. Iraq has also experienced significant migration from rural to urban areas due to water shortages. Failing livelihoods in parts of the country due to drought have even driven some Iraqis to fight for Daesh in exchange for money. Elsewhere, Syria, Yemen and Jordan have also experienced internal migration as people leave failing farms to seek work in cities.

An already arid region, many Middle Eastern countries are struggling to cope with theeffects of population growth, years of mismanagement of water resources, the construction of dams by upstream countries, and climate change Kerry Boyd Anderson

While much of the migration in response to drought happens within a country, drought can also cause or contribute to cross-border migration. Almost incredibly, war-torn, drought-ridden Yemen not only has internal migration but is also a transit country, as people fleeing drought and other disasters in the Horn of Africa attempt to travel through Yemen in the hope of finding work in the wealthier Gulf states or elsewhere.

Multiple studies have highlighted the role that unprecedentedly severe drought in Syria played in sparking internal migration from rural areas to the cities and then contributed to the social and political tensions that launched the civil war. The civil