Flocculencio
Donor
Not to mention that the Mongols also sat on Central Asia after doing this, further impeding recovery by turning what land didn't go to desert into pasture.
Doing that would be possible to some extent in Europe (and presumably the Indo-Gangetic plains), but not as crippling given the ecological balance isn't thrown out of whack - it's no more or less than sheep farming instead of wheat farming in effect, rather than demolishing a carefully built up irrigation system and preventing it from being rebuilt.
Also the base population in India and Europe was much higher than in Central Asia and the Middle East