This is a complicated war. This is a messy, cruel war where neither side has much regard for civilian casualties.
This war is not black-and-white. You might think it’s the brave rebels versus the evil dictatorial regime, and that’s part of the story. But it’s not all of it. Not by a long way.
So what is Syrian war and how it has actually started
Syria is a country smaller than the state of Victoria with almost the exact same population as Australia (22.5 million to our 23 million) which borders Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. Syria has both deserts and fertile areas and is steeped in history dating back to biblical times.
The Syrian Civil war is a conflict between its long-serving government and those seeking to boot it out of office. The Assad family has held power in Syria since 1971. First, it was Hafez al-Assad, then Bashar al-Assad.
Unlike many regime leaders in the middle east middle, The Assad family is not religiously extreme. They are Alawites – a relatively obscure branch of Islam which is not particularly hard-line. So the people have not been protesting against hard-line Islamists, as happened in other countries which participated in the Arab Spring uprisings.
The Civil War
Some of the famous theories that say how actually Syrian civil war started are, On March 6, 2011, of some children who painted anti-regime graffiti, some were killed in detention, and this led to public protests which spread around the country.
Another theory says the war started with demonstrations which mirrored those in neighboring countries, and which soon led to a security crackdown. In April 2011, the Syrian Army fired on demonstrators and the protests became a full-scale armed rebellion.
No one has a clear idea of how actually the war has started just the theories, these two theories were strongly supported by everyone
By July 2011, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had formed. The FSA never existed before that. “Local areas formed their own militias with the aim of toppling the government without any coordination or centralized command or control,
“The militias were a combination of local area tribal groups, deserters from the military who had been conscripted despite holding anti-government beliefs and disaffected locals.”
Then a combination of Jihadists, some from Syria and some from elsewhere, joined the FSA. Some even came from the faraway Caucasus region, where accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev originally hailed from.
So in other words, you had genuine Syrian freedom fighters joined by people with their own Islamist agendas. But because the FSA was under-armed and undermanned, they had little choice but to form a loose coalition with these volatile new kids on the revolutionary block and pretty soon bad guys on both sides started killing civilians
Women and children no matter where they come from living in Syria are vulnerable to being trafficked through sexual exploitation, Multiple sources report ISIL(the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant) continues to force local Syrian girls and women in ISIS(Islamic state of Iraq and Syria) controlled areas into marriages with its fighters, ISIS has also enslaved thousands of women, primarily women and children from the Yazidi community who are forcibly brought to Syria to be sold in human trafficking rings are provided to fighters, where they experience forced marriage, domestic servitude, systematic rape, and sexual violence
With men largely either engaged in fighting or prevented from leaving conflict zones, the majority of displaced Syrians are women, fleeing the war doesn’t mean that they are safe , women must pass through areas controlled by armed groups, negotiating checkpoints where rape and sexual assault are commonplace .when they lacked the financial resources to pay for their journey, smugglers would often try to coerce them into having sex
TODAY
Its been 7 years since the war started . Syria’s civil war has created the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Half the country’s pre-war population more than 11 million people have been killed or forced to flee their homes till now
Families are struggling to survive inside Syria, or make a new home in neighboring countries. Others are risking their lives on the way to Europe, hoping to find acceptance and opportunity. And harsh winters and hot summers make life as a refugee even more difficult. Let us hope this deadly war ends soon so that Syrians can have a normal life.
by GANESH SAI DHEERAJ
Gsd Speaks 