The Independent reports: Almost half a million dead. More than 10.9 million forced to flee their homes, many into the arms of traffickers or graves at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Cities starved into submission by government sieges, tens of thousands disappeared in regime prisons, and the rampant growth of extremist ideology intent on sucking the little life and joy left out of Syria.
An entire generation of children who don’t flinch at explosions or artillery fire in the distance.
Such is the state of the Syrian revolution, six years on since the hopes of the Arab Spring.
No one who took to the streets of Damascus and Aleppo in a “Day of Rage” on 15 March 2011, demanding the release of 15 Deraa teenagers arrested for daubing walls with anti-government graffiti, could foresee the scale of the war to come.
“Your turn, Doctor [Bashar al-Assad],” demonstrators chanted, drawing courage from the recent fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia.
Arrests and beatings did not deter them. After three days of the exceptionally rare protests against authority, the government had had enough. On March 18, four protesters in Deraa – most reports say they were unarmed – were shot by security forces which opened fire on a crowd.
The killings provided the catalyst for a revolution which has morphed into a conflict unlike any other modern war.
Its full repercussions are still yet to be understood.
On the sixth anniversary of the uprising, Syria now shows dangerous signs of descending into an entrenched state of warfare such as that suffered by Iraq and Afghanistan, subject to the whims of internal warlords and proxy powers.
In diplomatic circles, once-strident calls that “Assad must go” are no longer very loud.
Despite round after round of failed peace talks, the UN is adamant a diplomatic solution to the crisis must be agreed, even as Russian and Iranian intervention on the battlefield has once again put a military victory within the Assad government’s reach.
The fall of Aleppo at the end of the last year and election of US President Donald Trump means that 2017 is a turning point for Syria’s opposition.
Most Western players in Syria’s war now operate on the understanding that the best outcome rebel fighters can hope for is free elections in which the embattled ruler agrees to step down.
“The extent to which the West is willing to continue to provide military support for the rebels is uncertain, particularly with Trump so narrowly focused on defeating Isis,” said Tim Eaton, a research fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
“Without significantly increased backing, which is not forthcoming, the rebels are in a position where they can’t win.
“That doesn’t mean, though, that they won’t continue to fight, and that there aren’t things to fight for. But six years in, the rebels may be forced to reign in some of their ambitions.”
Most of those either involved in the original peaceful protest movement or the armed resistance to the Assad regime that The Independent spoke to, whether still in Syria or abroad, were initially hesitant to share their thoughts on the country’s future.
Some said they could not possibly put into words what the revolution means to them now.
“I have too much and too little to say,” said one Istanbul-based activist, who asked not to be named. “I was on the side of freedom in 2011, and I am on the side of freedom now. But how many more will have to die? How do I judge that? It’s impossible.” [Continue reading…]
