Dilemma of Syria

Introduction

                                         The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict with international interventions taking place in Syria. More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.

History of Syria

 Archaeologists believe the original civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth. Seeing as its part of the Fertile Crescent, where some of the first people on earth practiced cattle breeding and agriculture, the land is chock-full of Neolithic remains.
Syria was finally recognized as an independent republic in 1944, and the French military eventually left by 1946. It became officially independent on April 17, 1946, but between then and the late 50s, it had 20 different cabinets and four constitutions. Not a very stable government, to say the least.
In 1948 Syria got involved in the Arab-Israeli War out of protest from the establishment of Israel, and once the demilitarized zone under UN supervision was established, future Syrian-Israel negotiations became volatile (and remain heavily so since). Many Syrian Jews left the country.
There were three (three!) military coup d’états in 1949, leading to a fourth coup in 1954 (the first one is considered the first military overthrow in the post-World War II Arab world). For most of the 20th century, Syria’s power remained in its military and not so much in its parliament. Because of the Suez Crisis in 1956, Syria signed a pact with the Soviet Union, allowing a Communist foothold in the government in exchange for military equipment. This angered neighboring Turkey, but brought Syria closer to Egypt because of their socialist leanings at the time.
Egypt and Syria decided to merge and become the United Arab Republic, but the idea lasted only a few years because of Egypt’s dominance. Syria broke ties and became the Syrian Arab Republic, and most of the 60s were characterized by frequent coups, military revolts, bloody riots, and civil disorders. There were also tons of issues involving the demilitarized zone in Israel  and their occupation of Golan Heights, and they leaned closer and closer toward a socialist regime with Soviet blocs as their allies.
Eventually, the Minister of Defense, a guy named Hafez al-Assad, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1970, and thus began a new era for 30 years. So Syria’s history might be confusing so far—but now this is where things get really complicated. Shortly after gaining power, Assad created a new legislature and local councils to govern smaller provinces, consolidated political parties, wrote a new constitution (again), declared Syria a secular socialist state with Islam as the majority religion, and launched a surprise attack on Israel with Egypt.
Shortly after, Syria got involved in Lebanon’s civil war, which basically led to a 30-year Syrian military occupation. Assad had his critics, but open dissent was “repressed.” There was an assassination attempt in 1980, and in 1982 between 10,000 and 25,000 civilians were killed or wounded by artillery fire in Hama in a battle against the Muslim Brotherhood.
Syria joined the US-led coalition against Iraq in 1990, leading to better relations in the West, but when Assad died in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became his successor at age 34 (parliament quickly changed the mandatory minimum age of the President from 40 so that he could take charge). He officially ran for president, but he ran unopposed and earned 97.3% of the vote.

Arab Spring

                      Arab Spring refers to the democratic uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world in 2011. The movement originated in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly took hold in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across the Middle East in early 2011. But their purpose, relative success and outcome remain hotly disputed in Arab countries, among foreign observers, and between world powers looking to cash in on the changing map of the Middle East.

The term “Arab Spring” was popularized by the Western media in early 2011, when the successful uprising in Tunisia against former leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali emboldened similar anti-government protests in most Arab countries.
The term was a reference to the turmoil in Eastern Europe in 1989, when seemingly impregnable Communist regimes began falling down under pressure from mass popular protests in a domino effect. In a short period of time, most countries in the former Communist block adopted democratic political systems with a market economy.

Civil War in Syria

                              Syria’s conflict has devolved from peaceful protests against the government in 2011 to a violent insurgency that has drawn in numerous other countries. It’s partly a civil war of government against people; partly a religious war pitting Assad’s minority Alawite sect, aligned with Shiite fighters from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, against Sunni rebel groups; and increasingly a proxy war featuring Russia and Iran against the United States and its allies. Whatever it is, it has so far killed 220,000 people, displaced half of the country’s population, and facilitated the rise of ISIS.
While a de-facto international coalition—one that makes informal allies of Assad, the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Kurds, and others—is focused on defeating ISIS in Syria, the battlefield features numerous other overlapping conflicts. The Syrian war looks different depending on which protagonists you focus on.

Economic Conditions

                                                             At the start of the war, discontent against the government was said to be the strongest in Syria's poor areas, predominantly among conservative Sunnis. These included cities with high poverty rates, such as Daraa and Homs and the poorer districts of large cities.
Socio-economic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation's population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates.
This coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria which lasted from 2007 to 2010 and that resulted in a widespread crop failure, increase in food prices and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Syria had also received in the same period around 1.5 million refugees from Iraq.
By 2011, Syria was facing steep rises in the prices of commodities and a clear deterioration in the national standard of living.

Demographics of Population

                                                 Prior to the outbreak of the war, according to the U.S. government′s estimates that were not based on any official Syrian sources, Syria′s population was 18 million. Sunni Muslims represented approximately 74 percent of the population; other Muslim groups, including Alawites, together constituted approximately 13 percent of the population; Druze accounted for approximately 3 percent; various Christian denominations made up the remaining 10 percent of the population (approximately 1.7 million persons). The majority of Syria′s Christians belonged to the Eastern Christian churches, such as the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, that had existed in the region since the earliest days of Christianity.
The Assad family that has ruled Syria since 1970 is mixed: he himself is married to a Sunni woman, with whom he has several children. His parents belong to the minority Alawite sect that comprised an estimated 12 percent of the total population. The Alawite clan is believed to be in control of Syria's security apparatus.
Syrian Kurds, an ethnic minority accounting for approximately 9 percent of the population have been disgruntled over ethnic discrimination and denial of their cultural and language rights.

Protests turn Violent

                                                            Protests erupted in Syria during March 2011 in the Southern city of Syria Deraa after the arrest and the torture of some teenagers who wrote some anti-government slogans and speeches .These protests were peaceful but the security forces treated them violently and opened fire on them which resulted in the death of many protestors.
This incident took more people on the roads and the protest stated spreading in the whole country. Government’s use of force and power acted as a fuel to fire and this things has decreased the chances to resolve this issue. By the July 2011 thousands of protestors came on roads across the country.
This situation became a golden chance for anti-Assad’s forces and opposition entities which started lifting arms  firstly to defend themselves against violent security forces and then to expel them from their areas.

Uncertainty to Civil War

                                          Violence escalated and the country descended into civil war as rebel brigades were formed to battle government forces for control of cities, towns and the countryside. Fighting reached the capital Damascus and second city of Aleppo in 2012. On 29 July 2011, seven defecting Syrian officers formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA), composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces officers and soldiers, aiming "to bring this regime (the Assad government) down" with united opposition forces. On 31 July, a nationwide crackdown nicknamed the "Ramadan Massacre" resulted in the death of at least 142 people and hundreds of injuries. On 23 August, a coalition of anti-government groups was formed, the Syrian National Council. The group, based in Turkey, attempted to organize the opposition. However, the opposition, including the FSA, remained a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, divided along ideological, ethnic and/or sectarian lines
Throughout August, Syrian forces stormed major urban centres and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests. On 14 August, the Siege of Latakia continued as the Syrian Navy became involved in the military crackdown for the first time. Gunboats fired heavy machine guns at waterfront districts in Latakia, as ground troops and security agents backed by armour stormed several neighbor hoods. The Eid ul-Fitr celebrations, which began at the end of August, were muted after security forces fired on protesters gathered in Homs, Daraa, and the suburbs of Damascus.

Violation of Human Rights

                                                                       A UN commission of inquiry has evidence that all parties to the conflict have committed war crimes - including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. They have also been accused of using civilian suffering - such as blocking access to food, water and health services through sieges - as a method of war.
The UN Security Council has demanded all parties end the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas, but civilians continue to die in their thousands. Many have been killed by barrel bombs dropped by government aircraft on gatherings in rebel-held areas - attacks which the UN says may constitute massacres.
IS has also been accused by the UN of waging a campaign of terror. It has inflicted severe punishments on those who transgress or refuse to accept its rules, including hundreds of public executions and amputations. Its fighters have also carried out mass killings of rival armed groups, members of the security forces and religious minorities, and beheaded hostages, including several Westerners.

Chemical Weapons

                                                         Hundreds of people were killed in August 2013 after rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin were fired at several suburbs of Damascus. Western powers said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government, but the government blamed rebel forces.
Use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War has been confirmed by the United Nations. The deadliest attacks were the Ghouta attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 and the Khan al-Asal attack in the suburbs of Aleppo in March 2013. Several other attacks have been alleged, reported and/or investigated.
A U.N. fact-finding mission and a UNHRC Commission of Inquiry have simultaneously investigated the attacks. The U.N. mission found likely use of the nerve agent Sarin in the case of Khan Al-Asal (19 March 2013), Saraqib (29 April 2013), Ghouta (21 August 2013), Jobar (24 August 2013) and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya (25 August 2013). The UNHRC commission later confirmed the use of Sarin in the Khan al-Asal, Saraqib and Ghouta attacks, but did not mention the Jobar and the Ashrafiyat Sahnaya attacks.
Facing the prospect of US military intervention, President Assad agreed to the complete removal and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.

Refugee Crisis

                                           More than 4.5 million people have fled from Syria since the start of the conflict, most of them women and children. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. About 10% of Syrian refugees have sought safety in Europe, sowing political divisions as countries argue over sharing the burden.
A further 6.5 million people are internally displaced inside Syria, 1.2 million were driven from their homes in 2015 alone.

Rise of Militant & Extremist Groups

                                                                                           The armed rebellion has evolved significantly since its inception. Secular moderates are now outnumbered by Islamists and jihadists, whose brutal tactics have caused global outrage.
So-called Islamic State has capitalized on the chaos and taken control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq, where it proclaimed the creation of a "caliphate" in June 2014. Its many foreign fighters are involved in a "war within a war" in Syria, battling rebels and rival jihadists from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, as well as government and Kurdish forces.
In September 2014, a US-led coalition launched air strikes inside Syria in an effort to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS. But the coalition has avoided attacks that might benefit Mr Assad's forces. Russia began an air campaign targeting "terrorists" in Syria a year later, but opposition activists say its strikes have mostly killed Western-backed rebels and civilians.
Besides ISIS there are other militant groups which have taken part in Syrian War and these militant groups fought for both sides, like Hezbollah which is an Lebanese origin militant group, fought with Syrian security forces to secure Assad’s regime. The other groups like Kurds and many others which were supported by Gulf Countries fought with rebels against the security forces.
So Syria became an save heaven for different militant and terrorist organization and a large no of militants went to Syria from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dialogue for Peace

                                                     With neither side able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other, the international community long ago concluded that only a political solution could end the conflict in Syria. The UN Security Council has called for the implementation of the 2012 Geneva Communique, which envisages a transitional governing body with full executive powers "formed on the basis of mutual consent".
Talks in early 2014, known as Geneva II, broke down after only two rounds, with then-UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi blaming the Syrian government's refusal to discuss opposition demands.
Firstly Kofi Annan was appointed by UN then Mr Brahimi's and then Staffan de Mistura was made the focal person, who focused on establishing a series of local ceasefires. His plan for a "freeze zone" in Aleppo was rejected, but a three-year siege of the Homs suburb of al-Wair was successfully brought to an end in December 2015.
The US and Russia led efforts to get representatives of the government and the opposition to attend "proximity talks" in Geneva in January 2016 to discuss a Security Council-endorsed road map for peace, including a ceasefire and a transitional period ending with elections.
The Geneva peace talks on Syria, also known as Geneva III, are intended peace negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva under the auspices of the UN. Although formally started on 1 February 2016, they were formally suspended only two days later, on 3 February 2016.
The talks, prepared by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), were intended to resolve the Syrian Civil War.

A Field for Shifting Proxies

                                                                            The unstable condition of Syria has given a countries chance to some of the countries of the world to do their proxy wars with their rivals in Syria. They started to invest in the present condition of Syria to save their interests and to show  their dominance in the region. This thing has added to worse conditions of war in Syria. Important countries which have done so include U.S.A, Russia, Saudi-a-Arabia, Iran. Turkey etc.
What began as another Arab Spring uprising against an autocratic ruler has mushroomed into a brutal proxy war that has drawn in regional and world powers.
Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support. Tehran is believed to be spending billions of dollars a year to bolster Mr Assad, providing military advisers and subsidised weapons, as well as lines of credit and oil transfers. Russia has meanwhile launched an air campaign against Mr Assad's opponents.
The Syrian government has also enjoyed the support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement, whose fighters have provided important battlefield support since 2013.
The Sunni-dominated opposition has, meanwhile, attracted varying degrees of support from its France.6r
Until late 2015, rebel appeals for anti-aircraft weapons to stop devastating government air strikes were rejected by the US and its allies, amid concern that they might end up in the hands of jihadist militants. A US program to train and arm 5,000 rebels to take the fight to IS on the ground also suffered a series of setbacks before being abandoned.

Scholar’s View on Syria

Saudi scholars are fundamentally supportive of Syrian rebels against Assad’s government. In our opinion it is likely a sectarian conflict with Iran supporting ones Saudi’s are fighting against. Therefore, concluding a generalized view of Islamic scholars over this cause seems highly unlikely and troublesome task.

People View on Syrian War

                                                                      In Pakistan views of common people about the present condition of Syria is that the present condition of Syria is due to foreign conspiracies especially America, Israel and the response of Russia, Iran and Saudi led Gulf Coalition which are fighting in Syria for their interests and destroying the life of Syrian. According to them America in this case is the Devil. They also think that  Syrian dictator is an American puppet and America wants to throw him out of the office so that’s why now it is supporting rebels and also that America and Israel do not want peace in the whole middle east and they that Muslims should continue to fight against each other. This is an American created war in which most of the horses are under his control rather it is ISIS, Syrian Opposition and other militant groups. People also think that ISIS is the American creation or the reaction of its own deeds in Iraq. Stabilization of any Muslim country especially in Middle Easts nor in the favor of America neither Israel.

Proposed Islamic Solution

      Islamic Solution of Syrian present condition can be the following:
1) Eradication of Monarchy in Syria.
      2) Peace Talks between two local suffering parties.
4) Justice should be given to every person.

Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H) said:
 “ Your relation with one nation should not compel you to do injustice with other                       nation.”
2) Stop the rival countries to fight their proxies in Syria.
Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H) said
“The killing of one person is the killing of whole humanity.”
3) Give all sects of population equal rights in every sphere of life
:.Allah said in Quran
“Keep your grip firm to the string of Allah and do not divide.”
       5) Foreign Involvements should be stopped.