The Syrian Civil War: Timeline, Participants and Impacts
War often comes down to who fires the first shot.
In the case of Syria and the on-going Civil War, it was the governmental security forces of President Bashar al-Assad that first pulled the trigger during the, in all other respects, peaceful protests of 2011. And this is as simple as this war has ever been.
From that point onwards, the situation started getting increasingly complicated. The seemingly unapologetic Syrian government failed to implement any real change, forcing its rivals to take up guns and military units to join them, already creating the first organized armed militia in the form of the Free Syrian Army by late July of the same year.
By 2012, most peace talks had failed and the war headed towards escalation. Syria was officially proclaimed to be in a state of civil war by the UN in June, after the rebels launched a significant number of offensives against government troops across the country. Massacres occur on both sides, but the opposition seems to be gaining ground. This leads the US, Britain, France, Turkey and Gulf states to formally recognize opposition National Coalition as a “legitimate representative” of Syrian people.
In 2013, Islamist groups such as the al-Nusra Front seem to help the war against Asaad and ISIS start getting more heavily involved but what characterizes the latter is their indiscriminate killing of both sides. Simultaneously, Kurdish forces such as the YPG (also known as People’s Protection Units) join on the rebel’s side and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah join the official Syrian Armed Forces. In August of 2013, a chemical attack takes place at a rebel stronghold with a death toll of at least 280 and more than a thousand people injured.
2014 gets a bad start with the failure of peace talks in Geneva. The balance of power shifts from side to side during the entirety of the year. In September, the US starts airstrikes against its predominant target: the jihadist Islamic State.
A year later, in September of 2015 Russia joins the war on Assad’s side, providing significant military help that establishes the governmental forces’ domination against the rebels. Later, in October 2015, the USA sends troops to train Kurdish and Arab forces to fight ISIS.
The years following 2016 seem to be crucial regarding the Syrian War. During these years, the war took a larger scale than “conflicts in the Middle East” and became a serious matter of concern worldwide.
Some events that defined the course of the war in 2016 are the Turkish operations against ISIS and Kurdish-led rebels. The operations took place in northern Syria, near the Turkish-Syrian border, resulting in the creation of a zone of Turkish control that later extends to Afrin. In addition to that, the battle of Aleppo comes to an end after four years of war (2012–2016), where the Syrian army and its allies were victorious. Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and it was the largest Syrian city before the war, during which it suffered massive destruction.
One year later the impact of the war in Western countries is clear, especially in the US where, after the election of President Trump, they officially take part in the war, launching strikes on a Syrian government airbase as a response to a chemical weapon attack on civilians. They also form an alliance with the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) arming and training them according to the US army standards. Furthermore, ISIS is defeated by the Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the YPG, and it was driven from its capital in Raqqa, being derived from all its land. Alongside the US was France and the UK, as the war progressed, participating in retaliation strikes against Syrian targets.
The latest events this year set a new course to the war as there are complicated shifts in the alliances formed. With the defeat of ISIS back in 2017 the emerging idea of the withdrawal of the American forces starts getting more traction, something that eventually takes place in October of 2019. Following this action, the White House announces that they will allow Turkish forces to invade northern Syria, a part of Syria controlled by Kurdish forces. As a result, the Kurdish forces become exposed to the invasion and lack any support from the international community. Quoting their commander in chief: “Having to choose between compromise and genocide, we will choose our people”. Thus, the SDF formed an alliance with the Syrian Government, which is backed by Russia.
Following this new alliance, the US and Turkey agreed on a ceasefire, for 120 hours, in order to allow for the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the safe zone or northern Syria. It’s important to mention the different use of “ceasefire” in US and Turkish media. In American media the term “ceasefire” is used, whereas Turkish media refer more to it as a “temporary pause” of their military operations in the area, leaving us to wonder what the next important steps in the war will be.
The Participants
Below is the most simplified, yet well-explained diagram we could find.
If one hopes to find a *slightly* more comprehensive account of who is fighting and whom, we also recommend the following image, uploaded on Twitter by a journalist who follows the topic closely.
It is obvious that a war such as the one occurring in Syria since 2011, can only create devastating impacts on the world’s economic, political, social and cultural fundaments.
More than five million people have fled Syria and hundreds of thousands have joined a refugee trail across European countries since the beginning of the War, forcing people of the countries — hosts to “reinvent” their way of living, as well as the global economy to drastically change. It is quite a challenge to break down every single impact of the Syrian war at once, thus we break them down into four categories, which we consider the most important ones.
Political Impacts
As we have seen before in this article, the War in Syria is mostly a clash of the most powerful countries /economies of this globe such as the USA, Russia, Turkey, Israel.
The complexity of the involvement of each party is undeniably hard to timestamp. It looks like an enormous web of military decisions and political and economic interests of every major force involved. We have broken down every one of the ties or oppositions between these countries, in the previous chapter of this article. The most important thing that comes out of the observation of the previous diagram is that what began eight years ago as a series nonviolent protests against the Syrian government morphed into an international conflict, between dozens of local factions, the Islamic State and several foreign countries such as the USA, Turkey, and Russia to name a few.
The biggest change has been the challenge that the EU has been forced to face since the start of what we call “the biggest immigration wave of the twenty-first century” resulting from the war in Syria. The refugee crisis has put the core values of the European Union under pressure. Freedom of movement, common borders and pluralism are just a few of these values that were reinvented by the governments of European countries. The anxiety over identity and culture was heightened and people stopped trusting in their governments due to economic insecurities and the fear of Islam. This led people to start embracing their country’s right-winged parties and seeking for security and answers. Some of the outcomes are the victory of Marine le Pen in France, or even more recent events, such as Brexit.
Economical Impacts
The following impacts, although equally devastating, are also the most measurable of all.
It is undeniable that the destruction of the general area in Syria caused by the war is enormous and quite visible, even from a simple picture on the internet. Five thousand people flee Syria every day and 28% percent of its population has fled their homes. Whole cities were destroyed alongside schools, hospitals, and precious ancient ruins and historical buildings due to bombing attacks. Approximately 400,000 people have died since the civil war started in 2011. Only from these facts, it is easy to say that Syria is an economically and environmentally destroyed and exploited place.
Almost five million Syrians seek asylum abroad with Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey (3.6 million refugees), as well as Germany (1.3 million refugees), being the top on the list of the country-hosts.
It is a fact that Germany has done a good job integrating this large number of people into its economy, by providing jobs and education for them. Germany, though, is a powerful country.
The real burden is pushed upon less fortunate countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece where the money and resources are not even close enough to sustain such a drastic change in population. Tourism, one of the biggest sources of income, especially for these countries, is negatively impacted because of islamophobia. The Health and education systems are underfunded and unable to respond effectively to this wave of people. The people of the countries- hosts are under constant frustration. Lack of water is also a major problem for drier countries like Jordan.
Social Impacts
After the rise of ISIS in Syria, what the western world knows and fears as terrorism is yet reborn, refreshing memories of 2001 and the 9/11 attacks in American people’s minds. It is true, ISIS and everything that came with it (Paris attacks, Manchester attacks, Various attacks in Germany) is the first, truly scary impact that the war had on the lives of people in the EU.
These events created a massive fear for Syrian refugees, comparing them to Radical Islamists and ISIS and making their transition and integration to any country-host a big challenge. Many Syrians are still marginalized seen as terrorists due to their religion and are facing attacks and racial slurs in their everyday life. Estate owners do not rent or sell their homes to Syrian families, and employers either don’t hire or carelessly exploit Syrian refugees economically and physically. Many undocumented children and women fall prey to various types of trafficking and abuse and many families get separated even after arriving at countries-hosts due to similar problems and unexpected obstacles.
Cultural Impacts
When Syrian refugees started flooding Turkey and Europe, the collision of cultures that the world witnessed was massive. It seemed impossible for such a big number of Muslims to flee to Christian Europe without any cultural impact or conflict. How can people that have such specific rules integrated into their beliefs and such close relationship with their religion survive in this Liberal Utopia that is the EU? How can women in the EU who have tasted the freedom of individuality and sexual liberation accept women that are taught to be modest and wear a hijab from a young age? These are only two of the hundreds of questions the wave of immigration from Syria has created for the modern world to find an answer to.
The only sure thing is that there is still an ongoing fight between people of the countries-hosts and refugees dues to religious and cultural differences and nothing but time can solve this. It is only until we realize what both parties have to gain from this unexpected mix that we truly start finding a solution to all this frustration and chain of violence and displacement.
War often comes down to who fires the last shot. In Syria, no one has yet.
We are the Creator Conspiracy:
Χριστίνα Γούργουρα (Raed Raees)
This article was written for the Crisis Management Simulation Lab of Panteion University. Special thanks to our professor Betty Tsakarestou.
Additional Sources:
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/27/world/meast/syria-civil-war-fast-facts/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14703995
https://www.britannica.com/event/Syrian-Civil-War/Uprising-in-Syria-2011
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-23813975
https://aclj.org/middle-east/the-syrian-civil-war-and-its-effects
