The Syrian civil war is a conflict that started on March 15, 2011 and is part of the Arab Spring. It was caused 
because protesters wanted to end al-Assad's presidency and the nearly 50 years of the Ba'ath Party's rule which started after a coup d'etat in 1963. The picture on the left is the FSA flag.
One of the major causes was oppression by the government, including the government having the ability to arrest anyone they wanted to from 1963 to 2011. Another issue is censorship of the internet, which also lasted until 2011. Some sites that could give Syrians information about the situation, like Wikipedia, were blocked. Something similar is happening in China, and I think it will end badly.
Blocking information just leads to people thinking you are up to something bad, and it's like having a huge pile of brush on the ground. Once they find out you did something bad, it's like a spark hitting it, and the whole thing goes up in flames.
That spark was the killing of two Kurdish soldiers. On January 28th, 2011, protests were held because of it, but they were small in comparison to what was coming. On February 4th and 5th, hundreds of protesters marched in Al-Hakasah. In March, massive protests began, and the government started killing people, as well as using various non-deadly weapons. The killing added more fuel to the fire, and the protests grew to the point where one hundred thousand people protested in Daraa during one protest.
It eventually grew from a series of protests to a complete civil war. On July 29th, the Free Syrian Army, the rebel army, was formed, and somewhere between 1,000 and 25,000 soldiers defected to it. There was a battle on October 1st in Rastan, which the FSA came out of better because of defections.
On April 12, there was an attempt by Kofi Annan to form a ceasefire. Unfortunately, it failed. The second ceasefire attempt, which was planned to happen from October 26th to the 29th, also failed to stop fighting.
One of the actions against the rebellion was sending the Syrian army to fire into protests that were believed to have armed people in them, which was criticized by the Arab League, the US, and the EU. One of the Arab League's actions against it was suspending Syria from their group.
Another action involving the protests was when the US, UK, and France began giving the rebels troops to help in combat, while Russia and Iran have been giving the government weapons.
About 40,000 to 54,485 people have been killed so far. Another 355,000 people have fled to other countries. I wouldn't blame them, with all the killing.
I think the Syrian government will be overthrown. When you manage to anger people enough that even your allies start joining them, you've started a fire that is too big to put out. Eventually, the fire burns out, and all that's left is ashes. The UN needs to help build a democracy on those ashes. If that happens, things can improve in Syria, and maybe even the other areas like it will also improve. The picture above is the Syrian flag.
SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Free_Syrian_Army_member_prepares_to_fight_with_a_tank.jpg
Comments
Great job Zach!