It has been three years since the deadly war in Syria has started, creating an army or refugees and missing persons, and still this nation has been grappling with the terror it had unleashed. Now the theatre has changed too, to the western provinces of Iraq and to a greater extent, to the Iraqi Kurdistan. According to official estimates, almost 1.9 lakh people have lost their lives and many lakhs had been rendered homeless. Many are in refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. The intervention of non-state actors and foreign powers has been catastrophic to the already vulnerable region. It was a civilian protest, in the beginning, against the policies of the incumbent president Basher- Al- Assad and his government. ( The Assad family has been in power for more than four decades, as the Assad senior was one of the driving power of that coup d’état of 1963, changing the face of the Syrian polity. After initial flirtations with Nasserism, as had happened in the case of the Iraqi Baathi’sts, the Syrian establishment had parted ways and established their own system. Hafez Al Assad, then the defense minister, seized power in somewhat of a self-coup, and ruled the country with much of an iron hand.
The Assads, belonging to a Twelver Shia group called Alawites, have been the rulers of this predominantly Sunni country for a long time. This has caused widespread resentments among the Sunni majority and within the Kurdish minority, who has been waging an intense battle against the governments of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey for an independent Kurdistan. (Kurds are a distinct non-Arab ethnic group who takes pride in their cultural identity, as they are the descendants of an ancient culture which was spread in the historical region called Kurdistan and they are one of the largest stateless people in the world). The Assad rule was characterized by their secularism and fierce anti-Israel and anti-western moves. It was alleged that the country has been ruled by an ‘Alawite elite’ and incidents of Kurdish, Islamist clashes were often recorded. Added to this Syria’s alleged involvement in the internal affairs of Lebanon had created ripples in that country. Hafez –al-Assad died in 2000, and there were speculations that his son, Bashar will take the reins. An ophthalmologist by profession, Bashar came to the political forefront after the death of his elder brother, Bassel, who died in a car accident. It was Bassel who had been speculated as the heir apparent to his father. Bashar‘s rule will be seen as a tough era, mired in wars, internal conflicts and controversies. Syria took most of its troop back from Lebanon after protests in Lebanon in the aftermath of the assassination of its former PM Rafik Hariri. It was in 2006, when fierce fighting broke out between Israeli troops and the Lebanese Shia militant group, Hezbollah, which created flutters inside Syria too.
In 2011, numerous revolutions in various Arab countries began to change the face of the regional politics. It was started in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, when a poor street vendor called Mohamed Bouazizi had immolated himself accusing the police misdemeanor and high handedness. This had somewhat of a domino effect as protests erupted all over Tunisia, forcing the long-time ruling dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to resign and flee the country. It didn’t stop there and in that country, and soon spread to neighboring countries like Egypt and Libya. In Egypt, the dictatorial government of Hosni Mubarak had to resign after a chain of protects started to engulf the country. In Libya, this resulted in heavy repression by the then- Gaddafi government and at last ended in an intervention by the US and the NATO, eventually culminating in the death and toppling of Gaddafi. It was in this context, everything started in Syria. Most of the protesters wanted democratic reforms and it was started as a peaceful protest. The government’s brutal crackdown complicated the matter further, there by resulting in formations of numerous rebel movements. The free Syrian Army, made up of ragtag defectors from the Syrian Army, made initial advances, but they were soon overshadowed by the arrival of Islamic fighters. After the deadly chemical attack on the town of Ghouta, the fighting intensified, resulting in further chaos and destruction. The Islamists had made significant advances, and then soon the fighting spread to the resulting Iraq. After the fall of Saddam, the new establishment is alleged to have taken a discriminatory policy towards the Sunni minority. This resulted in the rise of various Islamist groups, which had overrun the nascent military of Iraq, and has been in possession of most of the Western Iraq since last year. By January they were in control of large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, and proclaimed a ‘caliphate’. This was followed by indiscriminate attacks on westerners, resulting in a hasty US led intervention. It has been continuing till the time of writing this, and the fate of this war is still unknown. The Kurds, hitherto performing as an autonomous entity were also dragged in to this war by sporadic advances by Islamist fighters.
Whatever the reasons might have been, this conflict has been a deadly one. It has affected the Middle East as a region dearly, and it might take years to be free from its effects. Perhaps the involvement of an entity like the UN or the P5+1 will prove to be good, as the people have been the real sufferers. Syria has become a broke country now, with most of its infrastructure in disarray. It will be necessary for the big powers to help the people, in both Syria and Iraq to get out of this quagmire, as no one can avoid this strategic region, famed for its rich oil resources and important location.
The Sky's the limit 