As i mentioned in my post the drought pushed millions of people in Syria in to the cities.

Now if they had invested in irrigation and supported the farmers with subsidized oil they could probably have avoided that from happening but the 2008 economic crash wiped out alot of their money and they could not afford to prop up the agriculture of the country ultimately leading to the unrest in the country. 

There are numerous reports written on this subject specifically detailing how the agriculture collapsed during 2010. Google is your friend  

The sad thing is that with proper financial support and planning modern engineering solutions could have expanded Syrian agriculture to feed the country to a lesser cost but these arent real countries so you cant expect them to really function as countries are supposed to. Fiefdoms generally dont plan that much ahead.