Summary of the Syrian Crisis

After decades of enduring authoritarian governments the people in many middle eastern countries started revolutions to get rid of those leaders.

The revolution in Egypt and Tunisia ended fast. In Libya it took a little while but eventually ended. In Syria the Revolution Turned into a long war.

As angry demonstrators in Syria demanded Bashar al-assad , the Syrian president, to resign his army replied back by opening fire against them.

Syrian rebels managed to get weapons and shortly they were fighting against the army of Bashar al-assad in an open war.

The free Syrian army was a group of militias formed by normal civilians and deserters from the Military. The Free Syrian army doesn’t have any centralized command or direct co-ordination between its militias.

Jihadists from many other countries came to join the Free Syrian army. The Free Syrian Army which is undermanned and under-armed had no choice but to fight along them.

People who belonged to the FSA and who had different agendas started killing Civilians as will leaving the Syrian people confused.

It’s believed that Al-assad is being helped by other countries ,especially Iran, and that this is why his army is still standing after a very long war.

Both China and Russia have interests in Syria and as a result they have been voting against international efforts that wanted to stop Al-Assad.

The Lebanon’s Shia Islamist Hezbollah group started to fight alongside Al-Assad.

Al-Nusra Front are a group of Jihadists ,who are believed to belong to al-Qaeda, who are fighting against the Syrian Government. Al-Nusra Front have the goal of establishing an Islamic state in the country. They have been declared a Terrorist organization by the united states.

Al-Nusra Front was gaining power and ground. On 8th April 2013 after the announcement by ISIS leader ,Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that Al-Nusra Front are a part of ISIS Al-Nusra Front got divided. Some remained loyal to al-Qaeda while the others followed Abu Bakr al-Baghdad.

Tensions grew between Al-Nusra Front and ISIS and this tension turned into a war. (See How ISIS was formed?)

In September 2014 A US led collation , which included many countries, launched air strikes against ISIS in order to stop them. The collation didn’t try to help Al-Assad but they just tried to crush ISIS. (See How Did the Americans Win the Revolutionary War?)

After believing that their Civilian plane was taken down by Jihadists Russia started making air strikes in Syria to support Al-Assad and to kill all the people they believed to be terrorists.