Syria has been in a civil war since Tuesday, March 15th, 2011. The war began gradually and slowly, dating back to political situations in 1970, when an islamic sect called the Alawites took power over the Syrians by force. The Syrians were now being ruled by one of their own countries minorities, despite being taken over by outsiders in the past. Below is a picture of the Syrian Alawites and their symbol. During this time their president was Hafez al-Assad (shown to the left) and his ruling family, known as the Assads. The people pleaded for the Assads to help free and stabilize their government during the 50’s and 60’s, which at the time they were going through trouble with coups d’etats (the coups d’etats are a military group that corresponds with dictator’s orders who forces an alteration of politics and government of a country. ) Three years later, Assad and Anwar Al-Sadat came together in a war against Israel. The Soviet union backed Egypt and Syria with weapons and the U.S. backed Israel with weapons. This was called the Yom Kippur war. Yom Kippur is a religious term for a jewish fast for the jewish new year. It was called the Yom Kippur war because Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiday, which was very important to the jewish practices in Israel. Egypt and Syria wanted to gain back territory lost to Israel in 1967. After this war, there was a 17 year long Lebanese civil war, who was Syria’s neighbor. This dragged Syria into their war due to allied forces. Trade with the world was controlled by the Assads at this time, and during the Lebanese civil war there was lots of black markets and smuggling across the border. The smuggling included most of the food, like fruit, vegetables, tissues, sugar, tea and other important everyday items, smuggled from Lebanon and Jordan to Syria. This began a pattern of corruption as more upper class people became closer with the Alawites for their own business purposes. Of course from this, the middle and lower class were the ones who suffered from lower incomes and were affected negatively from the corruption, which led them to hate the Alawites. The regime maintained its power by filtering the media and taking expressive rights of the people away, while silencing other important voices like politicians. When Assad died, Bashar, who was his second son from London inherited the presidency. The Syrian people got hopeful for a younger and more open minded leader. Bashar promised change , and in the beginning he helped restore trade and help heal the country. However, after some time the corruption sank back in. The Syrian people began to protest against their lack of freedom. When they protested, nothing was done but damage, the protestors were stamped down by forceful military action, which led to them seeking help from other countries. The foreign governments wanted to end the alliance between Syria and Iran, too so they offered military assistance to Syria as long as the new syria would cut ties with Iran and Southern Lebanon.
The other countries urged them to rebel against minorities, especially the Alawites, and considering the Alawite group protected christians, christians were attacked too. The conflict between syria split the country up further and further, it was minorities against majorities, and once the majorities tried to stand up for themselves the war began. All the syrian people want is freedom, they want the dictatorship to end and they want fair law against corruption. Weichert, J. Brandon. Stabilizing the situation in Syria. The Weichert Report. July 13th, 2016 https://theweichertreport.com/2016/07/13/stabilizing-the-situation-in-syria/ Nassar, Nadim. What caused Syria’s civil war? WorldWatchMonitor August 16th, 2013 https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/08/what-caused-syrias-civil-war/
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AuthorHanna Willoughby, |