Nearly Half Million Dead, Millions More Homeless as Syrians Enter Eighth Year of Civil War
JERUSALEM, Israel – Thursday marks the seven-year anniversary of the Syrian civil war, which began with peaceful protests seeking government reform and political freedom.
The toll is staggering, as various counts list between 400,000 to 465,000 dead and as many as 5.5 million of Syria's 20 million people forced to flee the country in a conflict that now threatens to explode into a Middle East regional war. According to international estimates, one third of Syria's housing has been destroyed.
Instead of sitting down with organizers of the demonstrations to resolve the issues, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded by killing, imprisoning and torturing anyone connected with the protests, irrespective of their age.
Demonstrations in Syria followed similar events in Egypt and Tunisia. Tunisian President Abidine Ben Ali fled the country in January 2011. In Egypt, thousands of protesters rallied against Hosni Mubarak, eventually forcing him to step down, face trial and imprisonment.
Social uprisings spread to Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Libya and Morocco. In Libya, demonstrations against Muammar Gaddafi also turned into a civil war. In Jordan, King Abdullah II managed to calm the situation by meeting with protesters and responding to their issues.
While the Arab Spring saw the overthrow of several regimes, the results rarely turned dictatorships into democracies.
For seven years, Assad has managed to hang on to power – with the help of the Hezbollah terror organization in neighboring Lebanon, which sent thousands of fighters to undergird the regime's military. And Assad can count on Russia and China to veto UN Security Council resolutions against his regime.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visibly entered the fray in 2015, though years before he worked a deal to establish a naval base at Syria's Black Sea port of Tartus. That arrangement reportedly included Russia writing off a sizable debt of the Syrian government. Even North Korea allegedly helped Syria build a nuclear reactor, which the Israeli air force destroyed in September 2007.
Nonetheless, Assad's use of chemical weapons has made him odious to many Western countries. Threats by former US President Barack Obama against the use of chemical weapons never amounted to much.
In President Trump's first year in office, US forces destroyed a Syrian air force base believed to have launched chemical attacks against civilians.
Attempted ceasefires have failed, and the recent brutality against the residents of Afrin – including the use of chemical weapons – continues, with most of the world unwilling or unable to intervene. And there's no end in sight.
