By Isaac Eger
Since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 many of the nation’s cities have been flattened, more than 250,000 people have been killed, millions have fled and gangs have claimed swathes of the rubble in the name of religion.
Those attending the Vienna summit will debate — among other issues — the future of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
Money, guns and opposing causes within the conflict have changed the course of Syria’s civil war.
“It’s your turn, doctor.”
The thinly veiled threat to Assad, a trained ophthalmologist, was scrawled on a school wall in the southwestern city of Dara’a in March 2011. The writer’s message: Assad would be the next ruler brought down in the Arab Spring.
Assad’s regime responded to the graffiti by arresting and torturing more than a dozen teenagers. Protests were stamped out with troops and tanks, and soldiers killed mourners at funerals for protesters.
For almost 50 years, the Assads ruled with a “state of emergency” that justified arrests and banned public gatherings. Assad’s government was secular, but favored members of his relatively small Alawi sect over the two-thirds majority Sunni population.
In July protests spread to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, where clashes between protesters and Assad’s forces escalated. Soldiers were ordered to fire on demonstrators, and eight who refused were reportedly executed. Some began to defect, including high-ranking officers. They formed the Free Syrian Army, and the civil war began in earnest.
Turkey, a majority-Sunni neighbor to the north, permitted the Free Syrian Army to operate within its borders and began providing military aid in October.
While the Free Syrian Army struggled to organize and supply its fighters, a suicide bomber attacked buses in Damascus on January 6, 2012, killing 26 riot police on their way to break up a protest. The al-Nusra Front, a Sunni militant group founded by al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility.
With a steady supply of money and weapons from foreign donors, the group quickly rose to prominence with successful attacks on Assad’s forces and appeals to religious zealotry, accelerating Syria’s civil war. Al-Nusra said it wanted to overthrow the Assad regime and replace it with a Sunni Islamic state. The US considered al-Nusra a terrorist organization, but members of the FSA have fought alongside or even joined the group.
Chemical attack
Sarin gas was released in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing 1,300 people on August 21, 2013. A year earlier, US President Barack Obama suggested the US would intervene militarily if Assad used chemical weapons.
The US, Europe and the Arab League held Assad responsible for the attacks, Russia turned the blame on the rebels. A United Nations investigator said the perpetrators had to have access to government stockpiles, but stopped short of blaming either side. While the US and Europe debated military action, none was taken, and the death toll of Syria’s civil war continued to rise.
Two sets of UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva in early 2014 failed to end the bloody stalemate between Assad and the rebels. Foreign ties complicated negotiations: The US provided financial aid to the rebels and Russia was Assad’s most powerful ally, supplying weapons and money. Moscow also said US sanctions against Russia over its policy in the Ukraine were “putting in doubt the prospect of bilateral cooperation” in Syria.
Iran is wary of Sunni groups that are vehemently opposed to its Shi’a theocracy. It supported Assad by sending Revolutionary Guard advisors to Syria, collaborating with Hezbollah.
That summer, the rise of a Sunni militant group added a deadly third angle to Syria’s civil war. Originally established in Iraq, ISIS rapidly annexed vast swaths of northern Iraq and Syria. Well-equipped and led by former al-Qaeda operative Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS killed thousands of non-Sunnis and fought battles with Syrian soldiers.
ISIS also beheaded American journalists and other westerners. Suddenly and paradoxically, the US and Assad had a common enemy.
The US bombs ISIS
On September 10, 2014, Obama announced America’s first military foray into Syria. It launched airstrikes in Ar-Raqqah to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. The US said the strikes killed 70 ISIS members, 50 al-Qaeda fighters and a number of civilians.
A week later, Congress authorized Obama to train and equip Syrian rebels against ISIS. The rebel groups included the Islamist Army of Mujahadeen, which is composed of groups seeking to form a religious state, and a brigade from the FSA. Because ISIS is also an enemy of the Syrian government, the US airstrikes necessarily benefitted Assad too.
Three days later, ISIS besieged Kobane, a city in Syria’s northern Kurdish region. About 300,000 Kurds fled across the border into Turkey, which has suppressed Kurdish separatists inside its borders for decades.
Syrian Kurdish “Popular Protection Units” stormed Kobane on January 26, 2015 under cover of airstrikes by the US-led coalition. The Kurds retook the city, bolstering hopes that the US Operation Inherent Resolve, which aimed to destroy ISIS using local forces and US air power, had become a viable strategy.
Assad’s strategy shifted to a war of attrition. He blocked rebel and civilian access to food and water, and prevented aid organizations from reaching them.
Four million Syrians fled the country for refugee camps in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Lebanon alone hosted more than 1.2 million Syrian evacuees and began requiring new ones to have visas. Meanwhile water shortages in Lebanon and Jordan added to the misery at refugee camps for those escaping the civil war in Syria.
On March 17, 2015, three children and three adults were killed by chlorine gas from barrel bombs dropped on Sarmin by Syrian aircraft.
Of the 4 million refugees in camps outside of Syria, half were children. UNICEF said 2.8 million Syrian children were not attending school, and the breakdown of the health care system led to outbreaks of measles and polio.
That August, the Obama administration said it would defend US-trained forces in Syria, drawing the US into direct conflict with the Assad regime.
The US began a “train-and-equip” program in 2014 in an attempt to battle ISIS. Under the policy, the Pentagon said it would defend the newly trained forces if attacked by ISIS or any other group.
Military analysts said the policy change could pit US forces, even inadvertently, against Assad’s. Assad has denounced the train-and-equip program, although the fighters intend to fight ISIS, not Syrian government troops.
World leaders debate a fix
In separate, combative speeches, the United Nations in September, Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted differing visions for Syria’s future. The two leaders disagreed about whether Assad is to blame for the the horrific loss of life, and whether he should retain power.
As the US and its allies continue to bomb ISIS positions in Syria, Russia has begun a troop build-up — including the addition of tanks and warplanes — to bolster Assad. Putin and Obama met after their UN speeches to discuss how their forces would avoid coming into conflict in the weeks ahead.
Days later in Vienna, diplomats from 17 countries, the European Union and the UN met to discuss how to end the war. The US and its allies who back rebels in Syria sat face-to-face with Russia and Iran, who are supporting Assad’s government and have recently increased their military engagement in the war.
A senior official with the US State Department told the Washington Post that the Vienna talks had taken on a new urgency because of the refugee crisis in Europe.
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