Syria and Arab Problems

In 2014 the hottest military conflict in the world is what many call a civil war in Syria. The Syrian government considers the fighting a rebellion by extremists rather than a full-blown war, while many Syrian opposition forces consider themselves freedom fighters against a tyrannical long-time President in power, Bashar Al-Assad. They feel the brunt of being engaged in long and brutal military fight, or for better uses of the word, a war.

The conflict has been ongoing for three years; for rather inconvenient reasons many Syrian people are left unaided by the outside world because of external factors that normally would allow neighbors or global powers to intervene in more political, military, or at least humanitarian ways. Historically, Syria has been more closely aligned with Russia, and at times Iran, which does them no favors when currying favor with the West. This is part of the reason why the UN and Western states do not directly intervene. But the West has been dealing with other conflicts that have made them weary of such intervention, especially involving repressive Muslim-based forces, like in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Libya. Soldiers and marines coming home in coffins does nothing to inspire the leaders or their constituents entrenched in the safety of the peaceful West. The United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and dozens of other nations have felt like they have sacrificed their share against jihadi extremists and Al-Qaeda in the last ten years. Syria seems like another deadly proposition that many have no stomach for. Let alone the financial implications.

Since the US removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and consequent violence in Iraq until 2009, there has generally been groups of Arab refugees displaced across the region. Not until the Arab Spring of 2010-2011 did certain Arabs mobilize in large enough numbers across other Arab nations did the Syrian anti-government get into gear.

There are enough factors involved in the Syrian problem, plus other Arab issues to deal with, that many powerful states seem to sit idly by and let them kill each other tragically.

Arabs have put themselves in a tough spot. The democracies have had a hard time, such as Egypt or Tunisia, while there is discontent in  the Constitutional monarchies, or kingdoms, also considered authoritarian regimes. Poverty lies at the root of many of the social and political ills, while extremist ideologies and parties also threaten the status quo, even within democratic movements as evidenced in Palestine or Libya.

There are other factors unaddressed in this blog post, such as the minority leaders of Syria who are Alawite, more fundamentally linked to Shia Islam than Sunna majority of most of these countries, minus Iraq.

Perhaps the government power shift in Iraq has pushed the dominoes of the region in a more dangerous way, similar to the change of autonomy in the Holy Land leaning towards Hamas more than the secular Fatah leadership within Palestine...

More later...

EMC