The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915-1918) was a period of mass starvation during World War I. The Allies' blockade was made worse by another introduced by Djemal Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army of the Ottoman Empire in Syria region, where crops were barred from entering from the neighboring Syrian hinterland to Mount Lebanon, and by the arrival of a swarm of locusts to the region in 1915 that, for three continuous months, devoured the remaining crops. The famine was caused by a convergence of political and environmental factors that lead to the death of half of the population of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire and the precursor of modern-day Lebanon.