In a time of social media, people are too embarrassed to
ask questions everyone pretends everyone knows the
answers to – like the complicated war in Syria, which
like most, stands at an intersection of history, politics,
religion and complicated international relations further
complicated by President Barack Obama’s pressure to
intervene.
How do you sound knowledgeable for the next hashtag?
Well, the Washington Post has solved the puzzle! See 9
questions and their answers below:
The United States and allies are preparing for a possibly
imminent series of limited military strikes against Syria,
the first direct U.S. intervention in the two-year civil
war, in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad’s
suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.
If you found the above sentence kind of confusing, or
aren’t exactly sure why Syria is fighting a civil war, or
even where Syria is located, then this is the article for
you. What’s happening in Syria is really important, but it
can also be confusing and difficult to follow even for
those of us glued to it.
Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most
basic questions. First, a disclaimer: Syria and its
history are really complicated; this is not an exhaustive
or definitive account of that entire story, just some
background, written so that anyone can understand it.

1. What is Syria?
Syria is a country in the Middle East, along the
eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s about
the same size as Washington state with a population
a little over three times as large – 22 million. Syria
is very diverse, ethnically and religiously, but most
Syrians are ethnic Arab and follow the Sunni
branch of Islam. Civilization in Syria goes back
thousands of years, but the country as it exists
today is very young. Its borders were drawn by
European colonial powers in the 1920s.
Syria is in the middle of an extremely violent civil
war. Fighting between government forces and rebels
has killed more 100,000 and created 2 million
refugees, half of them children .

2. Why are people in Syria killing each other?
The killing started in April 2011, when peaceful
protests inspired by earlier revolutions in Egypt and
Tunisia rose up to challenge the dictatorship
running the country. The government responded —
there is no getting around this — like monsters.
First, security forces quietly killed activists. Then
they started kidnapping, raping, torturing and
killing activists and their family members, including
a lot of children , dumping their mutilated bodies by
the sides of roads. Then troops began simply
opening fire on protests. Eventually, civilians started
shooting back.
Fighting escalated from there until it was a civil
war. Armed civilians organized into rebel groups.
The army deployed across the country, shelling and
bombing whole neighborhoods and towns, trying to
terrorize people into submission. They’ve also
allegedly used chemical weapons, which is a big
deal for reasons I’ll address below. Volunteers from
other countries joined the rebels, either because
they wanted freedom and democracy for Syria or,
more likely, because they are jihadists who hate
Syria’s secular government. The rebels were gaining
ground for a while and now it looks like Assad is
coming back. There is no end in sight.

3. That’s horrible. But there are protests lots of
places. How did it all go so wrong in Syria? And,
please, just give me the short version.
That’s a complicated question, and there’s no single,
definitive answer. This is the shortest possible
version — stay with me, it’s worth it. You might
say, broadly speaking, that there are two general
theories. Both start with the idea that Syria has
been a powder keg waiting to explode for decades
and that it was set off, maybe inevitably, by the
2011 protests and especially by the government’s
overly harsh crackdown.
Before we dive into the theories, you have to
understand that the Syrian government really
overreacted when peaceful protests started in
mid-2011, slaughtering civilians unapologetically,
which was a big part of how things escalated as
quickly as they did. Assad learned this from his
father. In 1982, Assad’s father and then-dictator
Hafez al-Assad responded to a Muslim Brotherhood-
led uprising in the city of Hama by leveling entire
neighborhoods . He killed thousands of civilians,
many of whom had nothing to do with the uprising.
But it worked, and it looks like the younger Assad
tried to reproduce it. His failure made the descent
into chaos much worse.
Okay, now the theories for why Syria spiraled so
wildly. The first is what you might call “sectarian
re-balancing” or “ the Fareed Zakaria case ” for why
Syria is imploding (he didn’t invent this argument
but is a major proponent). Syria has artificial
borders that were created by European colonial
powers, forcing together an amalgam of diverse
religious and ethnic groups. Those powers also
tended to promote a minority and rule through it,
worsening preexisting sectarian tensions.
Zakaria’s argument is that what we’re seeing in
Syria is in some ways the inevitable re-balancing of
power along ethnic and religious lines. He compares
it to the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq after the United
States toppled Saddam Hussein, after which a long-
oppressed majority retook power from, and violently
punished, the former minority rulers. Most Syrians
are Sunni Arabs, but the country is run by
members of a minority sect known as Alawites
(they’re ethnic Arab but follow a smaller branch of
Islam). The Alawite government rules through a
repressive dictatorship and gives Alawites special
privileges , which makes some Sunnis and other
groups hate Alawites in general, which in turn
makes Alawites fear that they’ll be slaughtered en
masse if Assad loses the war. (There are other
minorities as well, such as ethnic Kurds and
Christian Arabs; too much to cover in one
explainer.) Also, lots of Syrian communities are
already organized into ethnic or religious enclaves,
which means that community militias are also
sectarian militias. That would explain why so much
of the killing in Syria has developed along sectarian
lines. It would also suggest that there’s not much
anyone can do to end the killing because, in
Zakaria’s view, this is a painful but unstoppable
process of re-balancing power.
The second big theory is a bit simpler: that the
Assad regime was not a sustainable enterprise and
it’s clawing desperately on its way down. Most
countries have some kind of self-sustaining political
order, and it looked for a long time like Syria was
held together by a cruel and repressive but
basically stable dictatorship. But maybe it wasn’t
stable; maybe it was built on quicksand. Bashar al-
Assad’s father Hafez seized power in a coup in 1970
after two decades of extreme political instability.
His government was a product of Cold War
meddling and a kind of Arab political identity crisis
that was sweeping the region. But he picked the
losing sides of both: the Soviet Union was his
patron, and he followed a hard-line anti-Western
nationalist ideology that’s now mostly defunct. The
Cold War is long over, and most of the region long
ago made peace with Israel and the United States;
the Assad regime’s once-solid ideological and
geopolitical identity is hopelessly outdated. But
Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000 when his
father died, never bothered to update it. So when
things started going belly-up two years ago, he
didn’t have much to fall back on except for his
ability to kill people.

4. I hear a lot about how Russia still loves Syria,
though. And Iran, too. What’s their deal?
Yeah, Russia is Syria’s most important ally. Moscow
blocks the United Nations Security Council from
passing anything that might hurt the Assad regime,
which is why the United States has to go around the
United Nations if it wants to do anything. Russia
sends lots of weapons to Syria that make it easier
for Assad to keep killing civilians and will make it
much harder if the outside world ever wants to
intervene.
The four big reasons that Russia wants to protect
Assad, the importance of which vary depending on
whom you ask, are: (1) Russia has a naval
installation in Syria, which is strategically
important and Russia’s last foreign military base
outside the former Soviet Union; (2) Russia still has
a bit of a Cold War mentality, as well as a touch of
national insecurity, which makes it care very much
about maintaining one of its last military alliances;
(3) Russia also hates the idea of “international
intervention” against countries like Syria because it
sees this as Cold War-style Western imperialism and
ultimately a threat to Russia; (4) Syria buys a lot of
Russian military exports, and Russia needs the
money.
Iran’s thinking in supporting Assad is more
straightforward. It perceives Israel and the United
States as existential threats and uses Syria to protect
itself, shipping arms through Syria to the Lebanon-
based militant group Hezbollah and the Gaza-based
militant group Hamas. Iran is already feeling
isolated and insecure; it worries that if Assad falls it
will lose a major ally and be cut off from its
militant proxies, leaving it very vulnerable. So far,
it looks like Iran is actually coming out ahead :
Assad is even more reliant on Tehran than he was
before the war started.


5. This is all feeling really bleak and hopeless.
Can we take a music break?
Oh man, it gets so much worse. But, yeah, let’s
listen to some music from Syria. It’s really good!
If you want to go old-school you should listen to the
man, the legend, the great Omar Souleyman
(playing Brooklyn this Saturday !). Or, if you really
want to get your revolutionary on, listen to the
infectious 2011 anti-Assad anthem “Come on Bashar
leave.” The singer, a cement mixer who made Rage
Against the Machine look like Enya, was killed for
performing it in Hama . But let’s listen to something
non-war and bit more contemporary, the soulful
and foot-tappable George Wassouf:
Hope you enjoyed that, because things are about to
go from depressing to despondent.


6. Why hasn’t the United States fixed this yet?
Because it can’t. There are no viable options. Sorry.
The military options are all bad. Shipping arms to
rebels, even if it helps them topple Assad, would
ultimately empower jihadists and worsen rebel in-
fighting, probably leading to lots of chaos and
possibly a second civil war (the United States made
this mistake during Afghanistan’s early 1990s civil
war, which helped the Taliban take power in 1996).
Taking out Assad somehow would probably do the
same, opening up a dangerous power vacuum.
Launching airstrikes or a “no-fly zone” could suck
us in, possibly for years, and probably wouldn’t
make much difference on the ground. An Iraq-style
ground invasion would, in the very best outcome,
accelerate the killing, cost a lot of U.S. lives, wildly
exacerbate anti-Americanism in a boon to jihadists
and nationalist dictators alike, and would require
the United States to impose order for years across a
country full of people trying to kill each other.
Nope.
The one political option, which the Obama
administration has been pushing for, would be for
the Assad regime and the rebels to strike a peace
deal. But there’s no indication that either side is
interested in that, or that there’s even a viable
unified rebel movement with which to negotiate.
It’s possible that there was a brief window for a
Libya-style military intervention early on in the
conflict. But we’ll never really know.


7. So why would Obama bother with strikes that
no one expects to actually solve anything?
Okay, you’re asking here about the Obama
administration’s not-so-subtle signals that it wants
to launch some cruise missiles at Syria, which
would be punishment for what it says is Assad’s use
of chemical weapons against civilians.
It’s true that basically no one believes that this will
turn the tide of the Syrian war. But this is
important: it’s not supposed to. The strikes wouldn’t
be meant to shape the course of the war or to
topple Assad, which Obama thinks would just make
things worse anyway. They would be meant to
punish Assad for (allegedly) using chemical
weapons and to deter him, or any future military
leader in any future war, from using them again.


8. Come on, what’s the big deal with chemical
weapons? Assad kills 100,000 people with bullets
and bombs but we’re freaked out over 1,000 who
maybe died from poisonous gas? That seems
silly.
You’re definitely not the only one who thinks the
distinction is arbitrary and artificial. But there’s a
good case to be made that this is a rare opportunity,
at least in theory, for the United States to make the
war a little bit less terrible — and to make future
wars less terrible.
The whole idea that there are rules of war is a
pretty new one: the practice of war is thousands of
years old, but the idea that we can regulate war to
make it less terrible has been around for less than a
century. The institutions that do this are weak and
inconsistent; the rules are frail and not very well
observed. But one of the world’s few quasi-successes
is the “norm” (a fancy way of saying a rule we all
agree to follow) against chemical weapons. This
norm is frail enough that Syria could drastically
weaken it if we ignore Assad’s use of them, but it’s
also strong enough that it’s worth protecting. So it’s
sort of a low-hanging fruit: firing a few cruise
missiles doesn’t cost us much and can maybe help
preserve this really hard-won and valuable norm
against chemical weapons.

You didn’t answer my question. That just tells
me that we can maybe preserve the norm against
chemical weapons, not why we should.
Fair point. Here’s the deal: war is going to happen.
It just is. But the reason that the world got together
in 1925 for the Geneva Convention to ban chemical
weapons is because this stuff is really, really good at
killing civilians but not actually very good at the
conventional aim of warfare, which is to defeat the
other side. You might say that they’re maybe 30
percent a battlefield weapon and 70 percent a tool
of terror. In a world without that norm against
chemical weapons, a military might fire off some
sarin gas because it wants that battlefield
advantage, even if it ends up causing unintended
and massive suffering among civilians, maybe
including its own. And if a military believes its
adversary is probably going to use chemical
weapons, it has a strong incentive to use them itself.
After all, they’re fighting to the death.
So both sides of any conflict, not to mention
civilians everywhere, are better off if neither of
them uses chemical weapons. But that requires
believing that your opponent will never use them,
no matter what. And the only way to do that, short
of removing them from the planet entirely, is for
everyone to just agree in advance to never use them
and to really mean it. That becomes much harder if
the norm is weakened because someone like Assad
got away with it. It becomes a bit easier if everyone
believes using chemical weapons will cost you a few
inbound U.S. cruise missiles.
That’s why the Obama administration apparently
wants to fire cruise missiles at Syria, even though it
won’t end the suffering, end the war or even really
hurt Assad that much.


9. Hi, there was too much text so I skipped to the
bottom to find the big take-away. What’s going to
happen?
Short-term maybe the United States and some allies
will launch some limited, brief strikes against Syria
and maybe they won’t. Either way, these things
seem pretty certain in the long-term:

• The killing will continue, probably for years.
There’s no one to sign a peace treaty on the rebel
side, even if the regime side were interested, and
there’s no foreseeable victory for either. Refugees
will continue fleeing into neighboring countries,
causing instability and an entire other
humanitarian crisis as conditions in the camps
worsen.

• Syria as we know it, an ancient place with a rich
and celebrated culture and history, will be a
broken, failed society, probably for a generation or
more. It’s very hard to see how you rebuild a
functioning state after this. Maybe worse, it’s hard
to see how you get back to a working social contract
where everyone agrees to get along.

• Russia will continue to block international action,
the window for which has maybe closed anyway.
The United States might try to pressure, cajole or
even horse-trade Moscow into changing its mind,
but there’s not much we can offer them that they
care about as much as Syria.

• At some point the conflict will cool, either from a
partial victory or from exhaustion. The world could
maybe send in some peacekeepers or even broker a
fragile peace between the various ethnic, religious
and political factions. Probably the best model is
Lebanon, which fought a brutal civil war that lasted
15 years from 1975 to 1990 and has been slowly,
slowly recovering ever since. It had some bombings
just last week .

http://www.ynaija.com/thanks-washington-post-9-questions-you-were-too-embarrased-to-ask-about-the-syrian-war-answered/

Summary :


America sending missiles at Syria solves nothing, but it's necessary to prevent other dictators from using chemical weapons in wars(against its citizens)

America arming the Islamist rebels to topple Assad will back fire in the long run, because Islamist will always be Islamist/terrorist - they have learnt their lessons.

American arming the Assad military wouldn't solve anything because those Islamist are ready to die and like the article notes, Assad is from the minority tribe ruling the majority tribe.

What America want: the rebels and Assad come to an agreement, ceasefire/negotiation to end the war

Op...thanks alot!

Andyblaze: Op...thanks alot!

U're welcome

Please whoever is reading this topic should understand that the Washington post is a US backed paper and will never tell you the truth. All of the above written is just propaganda by the US government because they dont want you to know the real truth.

Watch this video below, and then you will know what the real truth is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkamZg68jpk

No evidence is pointing to Assad using chemical weapons rather evidences that surfaced in the few past days/weeks has pointed to the the rebels been the ones that used the chemical weapon.

usmsam: Please whoever is reading this topic should understand that the Washington post is a US backed paper and will never tell you the truth. All of the above written is just propaganda by the US government because they dont want you to know the real truth.

Watch this video below, and then you will know what the real truth is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkamZg68jpk

'Washington post is a US backed paper and will never tell you the truth '

Seriously, where are you from? I'll like you to go through their papers (Washington post) before passing ur judgement, you probably think the way u do because it's called ' Washington ' but you fail to realize this is not some papers in Iran, Syria or one of those extremists countries. The Washington post are usually the first to attack the American government on bad polices/behaviour.

Moreover, if u claim Washington post is a US backed paper, why should I believe this video is not a Iran or Syria sponsored video??

NO LONG TIN:

'Washington post is a US backed paper and will never tell you the truth '

Seriously, where are you from? I'll like you to go through their papers (Washington post) before passing ur judgement, you probably think the way u do because it's called ' Washington ' but you fail to realize this is not some papers in Iran, Syria or one of those extremists countries. The Washington post are usually the first to attack the American government on bad polices/behaviour.

Moreover, if u claim Washington post is a US backed paper, why should I believe this video is not a Iran or Syria sponsored video??

Lol. Ur funny. The fact that the Washington post attacks the govt policies doesnt mean they r not backed by the US govt. One thing i know is that they are not an independent publication. Everything they publish is influenced some way by its investors who r stakeholders in the USA. Dont believe everything the western media tells u. Find out the truth yourself. I read this article and the author doesnt support the war but the truth is not written though.

As for the video, it is by an American citizen that wants to find out the truth about everything as much as we do. You dont have to believe anything he says but google is your friend.

[size=50pt]Propaganda!!!! Lies Lies and More Lies!

American sponsored rebels used Chemical Weapons on civilians.

American trained and armed terrorist has been Killing Women and children in Syria.

America needs a Pretense to invade Syria so they are cooking up baseless allegations and we are not stupid enough to believe.

Don't tell us what we know about Syria you Devilish Liars.[/size]

Rebels admit using weapons.
http://www.examiner.com/article/breaking-news-rebels-admit-gas-attack-result-of-mishandling-chemical-weapons

The Americans themselves started and fueled this crisis. Search for General Wesley Clark 7 countries video (back in 2007). Search for Seymour Hersh's The Re-Direction article in the New Yorker (also in 2007) They have been secretly supplying these foreign jihadis with arms and training them for several months now. This is well documented and has been reported even in several western media. The Saudis have been funding the effort also. The only reason things have escalated and the US is now intervening under the pretext of "humanitarian concerns" is because the campaign of these "rebels" is faltering. In recent months the government forces have been scoring victories over the so called rebels. Remember Al-Qusayr? The Saudi intelligence chief in a last ditch effort to get the Russians to drop their support of the Assad government offered a piece of the cake after the "regime" is toppled. He also offered to buy Russian arms and has been widely rumored, promised that Chechen terrorists in the Russian Caucasus will not attack the winter Olympics in Sochi if only the Russians drop their support of Assad! (See the telegraph: Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria and RT's Saudi Arabia dangles lucrative arms deal in front of Russia in exchange for dropping Assad ) See also how the language has gradually shifted from "punishing the regime" or "degrading their capabilities" to "securing chemical stockpiles" should the government fall...It is just so sad and troubling the lengths that the Israelis and Americans would go to subvert and destabilize sovereign countries just for their selfish interests, hegemony and control..The same Al-Qaeda the US is claiming to be fighting a war on terrorism against are the recipients of arms, logistically assistance and funds from the Saudis, Qataris and Americans. What a charade! What wickedness! What deceit! What evil! Just watch out: As soon as Syria is out of the way, Iran is next... The Saudis would have assured themselves of Sunni dominance and influence and the continued existence of the House of Saud. The oil would also flow unopposed through a splintered Syria all the way to the European market. The Israels would rest in the knowledge that all potential challengers to their illegal - and expanding- occupation would be splintered nations weakened by internal and secular strife and would be powerless to act against them.

Now, the United States acting like the bully and rogue country that it truly is, is reversing the right to attack another sovereign; country that hasn't threatened it based on sketchy and unconfirmed evidence. So-called evidence that it has blatantly refused to present to the world to see. Acting with total disregard for the United Nations or international law, only invoking these laws when it suits them. A country that has subverted or attempted to subvert legitimate, democratic governments - or otherwise- more than all other countries combined (School of the Americas, Operation Condor, 1953 Iranian Coup D'etat, Iran-Contra Affair, Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1954 Guatamela Coup, 2002 Venezuelan Coup D'tat, etc). A country that has assassinated several presidents and leaders way more than other countries combined of which some operations would never be known (President of Ecuador Aguilera in 1981, president Omar Torrijos of Panama also in 1981, etc). A country that invades and destroys countries based on false, discredited and fabricated evidence as witnessed in Iraq (the independent: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials 'sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion), Vietnam (Gulf Of Tonkin Incident, etc). A country that parades itself a bastion of freedom and democracy and a protector of human rights but abuses human rights and commits war crimes more than any other and supports despotic, brutal governments and sponsors terrorism when needed as long as its interests are protected (Luis_Posada_Carriles, U.S._Army_and_CIA_interrogation_manuals, Fulgencio_Batista, Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment, Agent_Orange, Fallujah- White Phosphorus and Depleted Unranium, Guatemala_syphilis_experiment,Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan, My_Lai_Massacre, Abu Ghraib, delisting the MEK, etc)


People really need to get off the toxic propaganda peddled by the mainstream media and source their news from other sites such as landddestroyer., the corbett report, consortiumnews, storyleak, counterpunch, rt, infowars. tomdispatch, etc. That is the only way you gonna have a balanced and complete view of any issue. CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera(Qatari) are all propaganda tools pushing the agenda of their respective goverment.

WAKE UP!!