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Global Politics: Syrian Report

Overview:
The Syrian conflict first began in March 2011 when anti-government
protests to the currently in power Bashir al Assad regime began,
demanding democratic reforms to the government. This resulted in a
violent crackdown from the government as well as the arrest and torture
of several teenagers who painted slogans on a school wall. By the 22nd
April protests were occurring in twenty cities. Return fire from the
government resulted in large-scale military attacks from the Syrian Arab
Army on these towns using tanks and artillery, which resulted in hundreds
of civilian deaths. However, this intensified the uprisings as they became
more and more violent, having security forces open fire on demonstrators,
and by July 2011, hundreds of thousands of people were protesting
against the government.
On 29th July 2011, defecting officers formed the Free Syrian Army
(FSA), aimed at bringing down the government, marking the first
organized rebel force to form in the conflict. Eventually in October, the
FSA began to receive assistance from Turkey and they were allowed to
operate their command and headquarters in southern Turkey.
As heavy fighting continued between the two forces throughout Syria for
the next few months, U.S and European leaders (UK, Germany, France,
EU) decided to call for Assad, the current Syrian president, to step down
and to help lead the country to a democratic transition. This was followed
by a draft resolution in October 2011 of the UN, condemning the actions
of the Syrian government and calling for a cease of the use of force
against civilians and crimes against humanity, including accusations of
war crimes against civilians, such as murder, torture, and rape. This
resulted in demands to end these actions from the UN. This resolution was
vetoed by Russia and China, both supporters of the Assad regime,
eventually failing to pass the resolution, with a similar resolution also
being vetoed by the same countries in February 2012.
Soon after however, following prolonged periods of fighting in the country,
the UN and The Arab League managed to collaborate a ceasefire to the
Syrian conflict to come in effect on the 12th April 2012 and to start a
political transition process. This quickly fell apart as both sides resumed
fighting in less than a month and the UN admitted on the 1st May that both
parties had violated it.
In September 2012 the Kurds were introduced into the conflict as a
significant opposition sect due to an attack on neutral Kurdish civilian

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territory by the government, resulting in the Kurdish Peoples protection

units deciding to retaliate.
Up until then, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Lebanon had already been
supplying arms for the conflict, and in May 2013 many European
countries joined that list of countries, after the arms embargo on Syria
was lifted, and supplying arms for the rebel forces. Iran and Russia
however, supplied arms to the government forces, fuelling the conflict
further.
A UN investigation in August 2013 also found that the government had
been using chemical weapons after an attack on rebels outside Damascus.
This prompted an instant response from the international community and
demands that all chemical weapons be handed over to the international
community and destroyed. Syria decided to comply after negotiations with
Russia and all chemical weapons were cleared.
A second round of peace talks took place in January-February 2014 in
Geneva, however these quickly fell apart, largely due to a lack of
compliance from the Syrian government to have any talks about transition
to a new government.
In June 2014, another new party, known as Islamic State, or ISIS,
claimed their stake on Syrian territory and announced the establishment
of a caliphate in Western Syria. The group has associations with other
terrorist organisations, most notably the al-Nusra front, a group with
similar goals to Islamic state. It joined the fighting as soon as it announced
its territory, taking a military base in Raqqa and taking control of the
entire province. The group is known as a terrorist group in western
countries and gave cause for multiple countries to start airstrikes in Syria.
These airstrikes began in September 2014, with the US announcing it
will launch airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria. A year later, as conflict only
intensified, Britain and Russia both announced they will begin airstrikes on
Syrian targets in September and December 2015 respectively.
This continued fighting has also resulted in a humanitarian crisis. Since
the start of the conflict people have been fleeing out of Syria and crossing
the borders of Syria to neighbouring Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. As
of February 2016, more than 11 million people have been displaced by the
conflict and over 4 million have fled from the country. This has resulted in
a giant influx of refugees resulting in the EU struggling to cope with the
sheer numbers and many European countries have had to step up and
accept hundreds of thousands of refugees to aid in the crisis.

Key Statistics:

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Death Toll: Feb 2016 - Over 250,000 killed: UN (Estimates vary

150,000 -400,000)
6.6 million refugees internally displaced, 13.5 million total refugees
displaced, Over 4 million refugees fled from Syria (UN) Feb 2016