The war in Syria is fairly complicated from all perspectives. From an American point of view we are fighting a humanitarian crisis by supporting the Syrian rebels. The goal of the rebels is to topal the reign of Bashar al-Assad, the current President of Syria. Bashar al-Assad is a ruthless leader who has done everything in his power to suppress the rebels and maintain his control over the country. The ruling power is a sect of Islam called Alawites, a branch of Shia Islam. They only make up about 12% of the population; 70% are Sunni and the rest are Christian. The religious minority ruling may not have caused that much of an issue but when Bashar al-Assad came into power he attempted to “westernize” the country. Unfortunately, the policies he put in place increased the gap between the rich and the poor. This caused an uprising. The U.S. jumped into back the rebels but a section of the rebels is ISIS. So we are fighting ISIS on one front and are helping them in the next. The group we are mainly backing is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Furthermore, the rebels can not a decide on what they want for the new Syrian state. The groups occasionally clash over whether the state should be run based on Islam or Syrian nationalism. Russia comes in to support the Assad regime. As they rely on the warm water port in Syria for exports. That adds another component to U.S. involvement, we need to keep Russia and their reach at bay. The Kurdish forces have secured land in the northern part of the state, but have Turkish and Syrian forces on both sides. There has been no clear cut solution to the Syrian civil war as the entanglements are deep. The U.S. and other countries had launched missile attacks on Syria. Assad has used chemical warfare on his own people. 13.5 million Syrians have been displaced, about 6 million internally and 5 million to surrounding countries. On one side I struggle with the fact that we are aiding ISIS as well as fighting them. The weapons we provide to aid the rebels are likely moving to their hands. Although ISIS has fallen in the last year radical Islam is still a huge concern and ISIS can rise again. However, Assad is a man that should not be in power, he has left his people to suffer. I believe that the government should represent its people and if the people who are ruling only represent themselves then a government does nothing for its people. Assad should be taken down. Unfortunately that process has taken killing over 400,000 people and displacing millions more. We must find a solution to this issue quickly. Whether it is going in and ending it by force or finding another way. The region has been ripped apart by instability for too long, we must help them find it again and begin to rebuild.
