A brief summary of the events that led into one of the most disastrous civil wars ever in the Middle-East along with look at the background, players and the future that awaits it.
The world has been caught up with some many conflicts until recently that it is easy for the people to lose the track of some old conflicts. With all that’s been happening between Israel and Palestine recently, it is hard look at other places that were once in a similar predicament. Take Syria for example. The country has been caught in war for more than a decade and everybody seems to forget that what happened in the first place and how did it get here even. With the Syrian election at hand, we saw that it would be appropriate to review what’s been happening to Syria and its people all these years and to see what awaits this war-torn land in the future.
When compared to other Arab nations from across the world, Syria always stood out as the black the black sheep of the family. The rest of the Arab world just as you were ruled by a fundamentalist monarchy firmly rooted in tribal hierarchies that belonged to the bronze age and those far and in-between exceptions were often countries that were later conquered by Arabs and had nothing to do with their customs and beliefs. Syria was among the very first Arab nations that was beholden to a monarch and therefore possibly the only nation among other Arabian countries where leaders had the guts to be a little more progressive. So, when Hafez al-Assad introduced nation-wide reforms such as a secularist approach, it was quite clear that the Saudi Arabia and his allies would be having problems with it.
Following the Arab Spring uprising back in 2011, the concept of hereditary monarchy was seriously challenged by the revolutionaries all over the Arab countries. The fall of Tunisia and Egypt into the hands of rebels exacerbated monarchies’ fears, prompting them to effectively take over different cells all across the revolted countries, allowing them to steer the direction of the rebel movements toward their own agenda. Up until that point, Syria like Lebanon was one of the few countries at relative peace, preferring to observe the events from afar rather than engage directly in them. Unbeknownst to them, Saudi Arabia and its allies, now exerting considerable influence over opposition cells all across the Middle-East, had begun activating their cells in countries like Syria in order to turn the whole thing around.
Finally in July 2011, an opportunity presented itself. Dissatisfied military generals easily greased and charmed with the promise of fame, gold and glory effectively began a covert coup against Hafez’s successor, Bashar al-Assad, forming the so-called Free Syrian Army. Even so, these people were military command and no matter how committed to their beliefs, they would nonetheless abandon a lost cause. For that reason, radical Sunni extremist groups operating in Iraq, thanks to the chaos wrought by the US military presence, were slowly smuggled into Syria to sabotage and disrupt provinces. Chief among these groups was the Iraqi al-Qaeda led by none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who tasked his deputy Abu Mohammad al-Joulani to wreak havoc so as to prepare the land for their imminent arrival.
In a matter of two years, Saudi Arabia began moving its pieces openly, giving the members of the Arab League the right to arm the Syrian rebels, in truth the extremist al-Qaeda operatives, so as to counter the Iranians growing influence who had come to the aid of the government in the time of need. When the flow of cash started, each one of the radical rebel leaders began hoarding enough manpower and credit for themselves so as to prove themselves better suited for the job which was the destabilization of the central government and the country itself. In less than a year, the most savage combatants were united under the banner of Baghdadi, who had just declared himself independent of al-Qaeda, giving birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That however wasn’t the end goal cause no matter how powerful, a rogue faction is still a rogue faction incapable of fighting the might of a country. The sole purpose of empowering radical extremists such as ISIS under the guise of rebels was to prepare Syria for a full invasion by the conqueror who invades under the guise of peace but revels in war. One who seeks chaos under the pretext of order: The one and only United States of America.
To be continued …
