Syria: Grim stalemate after 10 years of war
The Syrian civil war is now a decade old, said Elizaveta Naumova in Lenta.ru (Russia), and there is still no end in sight. What started during the Arab Spring of 2011 as a series of pro-democracy protests escalated rapidly into a fullblown conflict, as the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on demonstrators, and Islamist militants and then Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. joined the fray. More than 500,000 people—most of them civilians—have been killed in 10 years of fighting, and at least 2 million have been wounded. Of the 22 million people who lived in Syria before the war, more than half have fled their homes. Some 5.6 million of those left the country, seeking shelter in Turkey, Lebanon, and the European Union and sparking anti-migrant backlashes. “Little is left of old Syria, not only demographically, but also culturally.” The commercial capital of Aleppo lies in ruins, and Assad’s onslaught there, backed by Russia and Iran, likely amounts to a “war crime.” The U.S., for its part, leveled the city of Raqqa while pursuing ISIS. Many of the ancient archaeological treasures of Palmyra have been blown up or looted.
This is what happens when a country becomes an international battleground, said Alia Chughtai in AlJazeera.com (Qatar). The first rebel groups were backed by Turkey and several Sunni Arab nations, while the Assad regime—dominated by Alawites, a sect of Shia Islam—was bolstered with fighters from Shiite Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, with airpower and aid from Russia. At this point, Assad controls more than 70 percent of the country, yet the war “is still raging” in the northwestern region of Idlib—the last area held by rebels.
Syrians desperately need our help, said Aude Lasjaunias in Le Monde (France). Many hospitals and schools have been destroyed or damaged, and electricity and running water are spotty or absent in much of the country. Nearly 90 percent of Syrians have slipped below the poverty line, and 60 percent lack enough food. The U.S., EU, and dozens of other nations pledged $6.4 billion in aid last month to help address Syria’s mounting humanitarian crises. But that was far short of the $10 billion sought by the United Nations, and a mere drop compared with the estimated $400 billion it will actually take to rebuild the country. Where will that money come from? “Assad’s allies, Russia and Iran, do not have the means to bail out Damascus,” and the West is conditioning large-scale aid on “a real political transition” that is vanishingly unlikely.
Even if Syria manages to somehow come back to life, said Hoda Al-Helaissi in Arab News (Saudi Arabia), the youngest generation will always bear the scars. Those who were children when the war began, or who have been born since, “have no memories or history” of the cosmopolitan country Syria once was. They have seen only “death, blood, or rubble,” and they are growing up “malnourished, uneducated, deprived, and poor.” What is left for them in their homeland? What kind of future can these damaged children imagine?