Logan Van Wyk: Causes Of Conflict In Syria

Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West. After fifteen years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before.

In Syria we see massive civilian displacement and casualties due to fighting. The specific symptoms are armed conflict, air strikes, and purported chemical weapon usage. In following step two and collecting data we have verified proof that the problem exists via independent and state sponsored journalists reporting to all major news syndicates worldwide. The beginnings of the conflict formed over many years of pro-democracy civilians being suppressed in lieu of an authoritarian government. The beginning of the actual anti-regime uprising started in March of 2011 following the arrests of teens and children for political graffiti (Syrian Civil War Fast Facts, 2015). This lead to mass demonstrations in the country's capital and surrounding cities, and let to Syrian police and military forces beating and even killing protesters. This led to the formation to militias forming which split the country into the military and security forces of the Syrian state and militant rebels attempting to overthrow the government. The impact of the problem is that Syria has spiraled into a constant state of chaos throughout the country, resulting in almost complete devastation of all the country's main cities, as well as, constant war and the death of many innocent people and

The Bashar regime is just trying to hurt has many innocent people as possible till they successfully recapture the power. They do not like how the protesters were speaking out against them, fearing other would turn away, so they used military action to try and regain order. A better term for what is going on in Syria is a humanitarian crisis. What is going on is affect the wellbeing of all Syrian people, not just one type of person.

Syria has been the epicenter of wars and prosperity for many decades. Whether it’s the Syrian-Franco war that gave their independence, or the flood of Universities that entered in the 1950’s; it’s always been a mixed bag with Syria. Many people will look at the destabilize modern Syria and wonder “How did it get to this point?”, well in reality it was not one event rather a concurrency of events that all led up to Syria’s likely demise.

The civil unrest that has torn through the country of Syria continues to garner international attention, igniting the opinions and encouraging the involvement of worldwide powers. This war has blurred the line between military and civilian, with both sides conducting a multitude of inhumane attacks on all peoples, regardless of whether they are soldiers or noncombatants. Powerful countries, such as the United States and Russia, have gotten involved due to these attacks and due to the power vacuum that has been opened for military groups like ISIS to gain support. The Syrian Civil War has also been highlighted by the ruthless ways of the Syrian President Assad, who continues to be supported by Russia and who the USA is trying to remove. This

Six years ago Syria’s civil war broke out and has torn the country apart. Violent reactions of the Syrian government to peaceful protests led the country into chaos.

In 2000, Bashar al Assad took the presidency 2, after his father Huffs Al Assad. How a country can has a republic system, the sons of the previous president took over the country after him? That gives a hint about what is the political situation in Syria is. The people did not have a just election in 2000. They had been forced to choose this president. Where he did and his father came from? He has opened the hell doors in Syria.

“Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history,” said António Guterres, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees. Uprisings and unrest have been occurring in Syria and the surrounding areas for decades, but I will be focusing on the past four years as tensions began to get worse every day. Politics and the government always seem to be the root of the problem when it comes to these violent and deadly protests and full on war. There are always two sides who don’t agree on anything, and probably will never find common ground. The two groups engaging in this civil war include supporters of President Bashar as-Assad, the president of Syria, and a group of rebels who do not want this man to be in power any longer. It all began about four in a half years ago in March 2011. There have always been the group of people in every place, who disagree with the government and their decisions. Most of the time, these protestors and rebels just want to get a little bit of a rise out of the government and move on. However, after a group of teenagers painted revolutionary slogans on the walls of a school, security began to open fire on them and ended up killing a majority of them. After this incident, more and more people began to come together and join their peers in the fight against the corrupt government. This revolutionary time frame was referred to as the “Arab Spring” and was not

The precursor to the Syrian Civil War dates back to when Hafez al-Assad, a Baathist, seized power through a coup d’état in 1970. Since 1970 Syria is a semi-presidential republic, with Bashar al-Assad as the current president and head of state. Conversely, Hafez groomed his charismatic son, Bassel, as the future president of Syria, while Bashar lived under the shadow of his elder brother. Bashar in comparison to his brother was an intellectual and exhibited a quiet and reserved demeanour. However, in 1994, Bassel was killed in a car accident, and as a result, Bashar, who was a physician specialized in ophthalmology, was recalled back to Damascus from England. Bashar was then quickly enrolled in a military academy in Homs and rose to the

Since the mid 1960’s, Syria, the nation nestled within the cradle of civilization, has been ruled by the Al-Assad regime, who govern with an iron fist. The quasi-dictatorship within Syria had not been challenged until the Arab Spring began in 2011, where many totalitarian regimes were toppled through protest and revolution. The Arab Spring has resulted in the ousting of rulers from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with uprisings and civil wars taking place in countries like Algeria, Iraq, and of course Syria. Due to the fact that the Al-Assad regime would not step down from power peacefully, were facing scrutiny, and a possible revolution, the regime launched military forces around the country to control the people. Bashar Al-Assad the current Syrian president is accused of committing war crimes, mass executions and even using chemical weapons on his own people.

Syria’s war has morphed from peaceful demonstrations against the administration back in 2011 to a bloody-violent uprising that has flipped in several other countries. What started as a diplomatic response to the arrest and ill-treatment to a bunch of young lads accused of painting revolutionary slogans against the Assad administration by peaceful Arab Spring demonstrators turned out to a trigger-happy occasion, as far as Syria’s government is concerned, at rallies and public demonstrations. Just doing it, the military forces are almost at-will every time they choose to open-fire

Syrian civil war started in 2011 was the outcome of the opposition against the President Bashar al-Assad regime. The uprising emerged as a response to the Arab spring movement that lead to regime change in Tunisia and subsequently turned into mass unrest rooted into the discontent with long-term dictatorship and poor economic situation in the country (Manfreda, n.d.). The number of Syrian citizens killed in the civil war reached 140000 since March 2011 (SBS 2014). The European Commission (2014, 2) reports approximately 9.3 million civilians “in need for humanitarian assistance”. The scale of armed rebellion between government and opposition that lead to an increasing number of casualties among civilians did not remain unnoticed by the

People began blaming the president of Syria- Bashar al-Assad, but he refused to step down. He offered to change the way the country is managed, but the protesters didn’t think that was enough

Syria like many countries before them, such as Libya and Egypt has become the epicenter for change in the region, allowing for other countries to follow in their footsteps. The question that is asked, what are the factors behind the instability in Syria and how does the religious conflict within their region have causal relations to the growing instability and the blending of borders due to refugees and displacement of their citizens? Looking exclusively at Syria serious key factors can be represented sociologically with regards to stratification, religion and power that is held by the elite class, which also makes up the religious minority. While roughly 90% of country is Muslim, 74% are Sunni, that makes up a majority of

President Assad was given an outstanding western education, receiving a degree for ophthalmology from a London-based medical school. Naturally there was hope that since Assad had spent time in one of the most consolidated democracies, he might have been more willing to implement democratic measures in Syria than his father. Assad’s rise to power was actually through a series of rather lucky events for him. Originally his older brother was selected as his father’s heir but an unexpected car accident thrust Bashar into the spotlight. Upon the death of his father, Bashar then proceeded to be appointed leader of the major political party and the army after which he was elected president.