Syrian War In Retrospect [Part1]

 

Rebels have committed various crimes and have on multiple occasions called for genocide and ethnic cleansing of Christians, Alawites, Shiite, Druze and other minorities in Syria.

The severity of the humanitarian disaster in Syria has been outlined by the UN and many international organisations. More than 7.6 million Syrians have been internally displaced, more than 5 million have fled the country to nearby countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq,Egypt, and Kuwait, and a few hundred thousand have fled to more distant countries like Germany, Sweden and Greece and have become refugees. Millions more have been left in poor living conditions with shortages of food and drinking water.

Bashir Al-Asad took over as President of Syria from his father Hafez al-Assad, and Asma al-Assad his wife – a British-born and -educated Sunni Muslim,initially inspired hopes for democratic and state reforms and a "Damascus Spring" of intense social and political debate took place between July 2000 and August 2001.

From 2001, reformists in Parliament of Syria began to criticise the legacy of stagnation since the rule of Hafez al-Assad; Bashar al-Assad spoke about reform but carried out very little, and according to analysts he failed to deliver on promised reforms.

Bashar al-Assad's family, which has ruled Syria since 1970, is mixed as he is married to a Sunni woman with whom he has several children, although his parents belong to the minority Alawite religious group, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that comprises an estimated 12 percent of the total Syrian population.

Assad's younger brother Maher al-Assad commands the army's elite Fourth Armoured Division, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, was the deputy minister of defence until the latter's assassination in the 18 July 2012 Damascus bombing.

The authorities harass and imprison human rights activists and other critics of the government, who are often indefinitely detained and tortured in poor prison conditions.

Significantarmed rebellion against the state began on 4 June in Jisr al-Shugur, a city in Idlib Governorate near the Turkish border, after security forces on a post office roof had fired at a funeral demonstration. Protesting mourners set fire to the building, killing eight security officers, and then overran a police station, seizing weapons from it. Violence continued and escalated over the following days. Unverified reports claim that a portion of the security forces in Jisr defected after secret police and intelligence officers executed soldiers who had refused to fire on civilians.

On 15 December 2011, opposition fighters ambushed checkpoints and military bases around Daraa, killing 27 soldiers, in one of the largest attacks yet on security forces. The opposition suffered a major setback on 19 December, when a failed defection in Idlib governorate lead to 72 defectors killed.

By Babatunde Amoo

To be continued