A look at Syria

Syria is an Arabic nation but not in the same sense as Saudi Arabia. An Arabic nation is a nation where Arabic is the national language. The nations on the Saudi peninsula are descendants of Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Syria was the nation that Abraham’s father left in order to go to a land that God was going to give him. He did not get to the country that is Israel today, but Abraham did reach the land.

Abraham’s first two sons were Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham sent Ishmael and his mother, Hager, away and they went down to a city called Meccah in the land that is today called Saudi Arabia. All of the nations on the Arabian Peninsula are descendants of Ishmael. The land that God promised Abraham and his father was the land we call Israel, and it is occupied by the descendants of Abraham’s second son, Isaac. The land we call Jordan was settled by descendants of Lot, who was a nephew of Abraham and not a descendant. The Arabic nations of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey have no blood relationship to the descendants of Abraham. In Old Testament times, the Kings of Syria were often at war with the Kings of Israel.

Syria today is officially known as the Syrian Arab Republic. On the west side the border is the Mediterranean Sea and the nation of Lebanon. Turkey is on the north and Iraq is on the east. Jordan is on the southeast and Israel is on the southwest. The size of Syria is 71,500 square miles, which makes it twenty percent larger than the state of Georgia. In population, Syria has 258 people per square mile while Georgia has 175 people per square mile.

Until 1945, the French ruled Syria through the Syrian Republic, and the President was supposed to be an elected office. From 1945 to 1958, the nation was ruled primarily by the military as a result of coups. When the military was not pleased with how the nation was going, they put in another president.

In 1958, Gamal Abdel Nasser took over the country and renamed it the United Arab

There has been some rebel fighting in Syria almost since Bashar al- Assad became president, but after the Arab Spring fighting in Libya and the uprising in Egypt, the war started strongly in Syria (2011). President Assad is a Shia Muslim that gives its allegiance to Iran. The majority of the citizens in Syria are Sunni Muslims and the two branches of Islam have a hatred between them. The Syrian Kurds wish to have independence and they now control more than 90 percent of the land east of the Euphrates River, which is about 40 percent of the land in the Syrian nation. The Islamic State (ISIS) still controls about three small pockets in Syria, but they are no longer a factor.

The organized rebels are Islamic Jihadist that are cruel and do not follow laws or principles. Iran and Russia are primarily fighting against the Jihadists rebels. The Rebel’s strongholds are in the northern part of Syria, in the center of the border near Turkey. During the time of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were supplying the Rebels in the war against President Assad. This has changed and the Rebels are now having trouble getting supplies and have lost most of the territory they had gained.

When the Rebels move, they mix into the populated areas and this has resulted in President Assad using chemical warfare without regard to the public to try to destroy the rebels. More than half of the Syrians have been displaced from their homes during this time of conflict. About 800,000 Syrian refugees are in European countries, and several million are in Turkey.

Reports from Saddam Hussein’s last days in Iraq say that he had the seats taken out of passenger planes. They then flew 53 flights with these planes loaded with barrels of chemicals such as chlorine and saran to Syria to get them out of Iraq before the United Nations came in for their inspections of Iraq for WMDs ( Weapons of Mass Destruction). This is the most likely source for much of the chemicals, that Assad is using, to have originated.