Why syrians are fighting

Nearly a third of the country, mostly in the north, is still controlled by rebel forces, and the conflict has only become more complicated given the significant investments by foreign powers like Russia and the U. What began as a simple confrontation between the government and its domestic opponents has evolved into a geopolitical quagmire.

Still caught in the middle, with little cause for optimism, are the Syrian people. I know a solution is not easy, but world powers should do whatever they can to end the nightmare. The United Nations Security Council has been unable to take any meaningful action to end the crisis, paralyzed by both Assad's ally Russia and China wielding veto power as permanent members. Russia has vetoed 16 Security Council Resolutions related to Syria, and it was backed by China on many of those occasions.

President Joe Biden's administration said last week that Assad had done nothing to restore his legitimacy, and it rejected any restoration of official ties with his government "anytime soon. In a statement marking a decade of civil war, U. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that while Syria had fallen off front pages around the world, "the situation remains a living nightmare. Assad and his regime's war crimes.

Please enter email address to continue. Fighting between Syrian Kurds and Islamists has become its own conflict. The Kurds have had a tacit understanding with Assad. Seeking to establish its own "caliphate," IS has become infamous for its fundamentalist brand of Islam and its mass atrocities. IS is on the brink of defeat after the US and Russia led separate military campaigns against the militant group. IS is not the only terrorist group that has ravaged Syria.

A number of jihadist militant groups are fighting in the conflict, warring against various rebel factions and the Assad regime. One of the main jihadist factions is Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which controls most of Idlib province and has ties with al-Qaeda. Iran has supported Syria, its only Arab ally, for decades. Eager to maintain its ally, Tehran has provided Damascus with strategic assistance, military training and ground troops when the conflict emerged in The Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah also supports the Assad regime, fighting alongside Iranian forces and paramilitary groups in the country.

It has provided government troops with air support and weapons and given it diplomatic backing at the UN and in international peace talks.

Russia also has troops on the ground. While Moscow has said it is targeting IS and other terrorist groups, US officials have repeatedly countered that claim by saying Russian airstrikes are primarily directed against non-IS rebel forces fighting the Assad government. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has accused the US of using its campaign against IS as a way to slow Russian and Syrian government military advances.

It has an important military airbase in the western province of Latakia and a naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus. Russian leaders support a peace deal with broad consensus among Syria's moderate factions that would allow Assad to remain in power.

It has also hinted it may support limited autonomy for opposition forces in certain regions within Syria. Iran and Turkey are also parties to the talks. The Astana process strives to create "de-confliction zones" that can reduce violence and pave the way for political talks.

It has also carried out unilateral airstrikes against Kurdish opposition forces in northern Syria and sent ground forces into Syria to fight IS and Kurdish forces as part of the Turkish-led operation known as "Euphrates Shield. Turkey wants a so-called "safe zone" in northern Syria and has pushed the US to disarm Kurdish militias.

Turkish leaders have been ambivalent on whether Assad should be allowed to stay in power in a final peace deal. It has staunchly opposed Kurdish factions attending peace talks. Elderly women from the Society Protection Units set up nightly roadblocks in Kobani. The force is led by male and female volunteers, and is independent of the official police and armed forces. The volunteers are drawn from across all communes in the city, with the aim to swiftly mobilize forces in the event of an attack, and to prevent a repeat of the civilian massacre by IS.

He, like many other soldiers, is deployed in close proximity to his home and family. The Turkish border is a few hundred meters away. Martyrs' Center in Kobani. Following years of clandestine work, the center was able to open publicly following the revolution in A May Reuters report said that Saudi Arabia had "prevailed" over Qatar in providing the most support for Syrian rebels. Saudi Arabia - a Salafist Sunni Muslim country and sworn enemy of Assad - is a natural partner for many of the Salafist Islamist rebel groups, and it has been reported that the Saudis have provided weapons and training.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says more than 70 military cargo flights left Qatar for Turkey during that period. Saudi Arabia has been in a proxy war with Iran for regional supremacy on a number of fronts in the Middle East, and has been in dispute with Qatar. In addition to the US, a number of other Western and Arab countries are reported to have taken part in on-the-ground and air operations in support of forces taking part in combat against Islamic State inside Syria.

Other nations took part in the operation against IS in Iraq. The exact number of casualties has been lost in what has often been called the "fog of war". But several monitoring groups have put an estimate on fatalities - many backed up with long lists of people identified as having died. The United Nations, which said in it believed that at least , have been killed, stopped counting long ago because it could not verify the figures.

One monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights SOHR , based in the UK but with a network of sources on the ground, puts the total dead at , - and as of December , said it has full details of , Sky News has no way of verifying these figures. Assad regards all rebel groups fighting in Syria as terrorists and has, in the past, said specific atrocities that have been blamed on his forces and his allies have been committed by his opponents.

Dr Rania al Abbasi is a Syrian chess champion and dentist who was living in Damascus with her family. When armed Syrian authorities returned in military uniforms to arrest the rest of the family, they looted valuable possessions and cars and took with them paperwork for the home and Rania's dental clinic.

Amnesty International has spoken to a relative, who says: "I cannot sleep at night. My thoughts do not leave me: is she okay or not? Are the children hungry? Are they calm? Or are they screaming and crying? The fighting was most fiercely fought in a number of areas that came under siege. They included:. Homs was one of the first places where clashes between protesters and Syrian police intensified to combat.

A brigade from the Free Syrian Army first began ambushing government forces and then took over several neighbourhoods. They were gradually surrounded and held out for several years before Lebanese Hezbollah militia arrived to bolster regime forces and forced them to evacuate the city. Syria's second-biggest city and commercial centre was largely peaceful at the start of the war, where only rival demonstrations took to the street.

But by July , the conflict that was escalating elsewhere arrived as rebels who came from nearby villages entered the city and were attacked by government forces. Several factions, including the FSA, Sunni opposition rebels and the al Nusra Front seized various districts and began a war of attrition against the regime, as front lines moved forward and backwards.

Increasingly, the Russian military became involved and, after capturing several Shia villages on the outskirts, cut off the rebel strongholds in the city and gradually tightened their stranglehold. By December , with just a scrap of the territory remaining in rebel hands, a deal was struck to allow anyone who wanted to leave to flee.

Most headed towards Idlib. IS's battle-hardened Iraqi veterans, sent into the country by al Baghdadi, quickly established themselves in a number of areas, including the Sunni-majority area around the northern city of Raqqa. In , fighters from IS and other mostly Sunni Islamist groups overcame a small government contingent and captured the first provincial capital to fall into rebel hands.

Following a split with al Qaeda, IS loyalists - many of whom were foreign - began to concentrate themselves in the Raqqa area as well as Aleppo , at a point when the group was seizing territory in neighbouring Iraq. Leaders of the group claimed they had set up a new caliphate, the Islamic State IS , with Raqqa as its Syrian capital. The West, fearing the establishment of a new, extremist Islamic nation, began to support rival rebel fighters in the region - the Kurdish YPG.

US-led airstrikes and increasingly well-armed Kurds began to take territory from IS - as they did in Iraq - driving them back until, eventually, they were forced to flee the city for the deserts. It took another year before they were besieged and then captured in and around the border town of Baghouz and another six months before Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in northern Syria. Like Aleppo, Ghouta took a while to become involved in the conflict, despite initial protests.

By May , however, a face-off between government forces and rebels, mainly from the Jaysh al Islam Army of Islam , the FSA and various Sunni Islamist groups, led to the eastern part of the area becoming besieged. It was estimated in that , people were in territory surrounded by the Syrian government forces. A series of brutal operations failed to dislodge the rebels for five years, during which time they sometimes fought among themselves, until in March , after a prolonged pro-government offensive, the rebel-held areas were first split and then picked off.

A deal was struck and tens of thousands of people, including rebels, were allowed to leave. Members of the White Helmets rescue children after what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Assad in Aleppo in June People walk among the rubble of damaged buildings in the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, in March It took another year before they were besieged and then captured in and around the border town of Baghouz, and another six months before Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in northern Syria.

A Catholic priest, Father Paolo was renowned in Syria for his promotion of inter-faith dialogue and was credited with the restoration of his monastery. In , Father Paolo met with some members from the opposition and also called for a non-violent transition of power in Syria. As a result, he was exiled from the country by the Syrian authorities. He often said he believed in the revolution of the people and didn't want to leave the country. Eventually, he returned and settled in Raqqa which, at that point, was outside of the government's control.

People affected by what activists say is nerve gas are treated at a hospital in eastern Ghouta in August Smoke rises after what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by forces loyal to Assad in the northern town of Atareb, near Aleppo, in May A man purported to be Islamic State captive Jordanian pilot Muath al Kasaesbeh in orange jumpsuit stands in front Islamic State militants before he was said to have been burnt alive.

Kuwaiti-born Briton Jihadi John, as the militant that appeared in videos before the execution of Western hostages was known, was really called Mohammed Emwazi. Use of chemical weapons in the Syrian war was been confirmed by several reports from the United Nations. Among the weapons alleged to have been used are sarin including a claimed attack on the Khan al Asal suburb of Aleppo in March ; chlorine including a claimed attack on the rebel-held village of Kafr Zita, north of Hama, in April and mustard gas including a claimed attack on Kurdish fighters in villages in the far northeast in June After allegations of the first major chemical weapons attack in Ghouta in August , then US president Barack Obama said Syria had crossed a red line and he would be seeking military retaliation.

But after indecision, and when there proved little support for it in Congress or in the UK, he struck a deal with Russia to force Syria to disarm, with hundreds of tonnes of chemicals removed and destroyed.

It was a move Mr Obama's critics said encouraged Assad to continue using such tactics. When an alleged attack took place in eastern Ghouta, in the town of Douma in April , it was Donald Trump who was under pressure to respond. From to , hundreds of barrel bombs - barrels filled with high explosives and shrapnel - are said to have been dropped in rebel-held areas by the Syrian air force.

They were often focused on areas where rebel forces were under siege, such as eastern Aleppo and eastern Ghouta. Some of the barrel bomb drops and some other airstrikes are alleged to have been "double tap" attacks, with the aim of killing and injuring those who rush to help after a first blast. Among the alleged attacks, according to The Economist, was a hit on a Medecins San Frontiers hospital in Homs in December and several attacks on White Helmet rescue teams - a group that was set up with Western funding to help save the lives of civilians caught up in violence.

There have been widespread reports of rape being used as a weapon, with NGO International Rescue Committee, among others, saying that fear of the sex crime above anything else had forced many Syrians to become refugees. While all parties have been blamed in the seven-year war, greatest attention has been paid to the abuse meted out by Islamic State fighters, many of whom came from outside Syria. IS has also been blamed for the mass execution of unknown numbers of prisoners of war, civilians, and even its own fighters who tried to defect.

In summer , soon after IS declared its caliphate, videos began to emerge on the group's news services of Western journalists and aid workers being beheaded by a shadowy British-accented figure who became dubbed "Jihadi John". Videos purporting to show or prove the murders of at least seven US, British and Japanese civilians were released and dozens of others are thought to have been decapitated.

Jihadi John, a Kuwaiti-born London-raised man called Mohammed Emwazi, was later killed in an airstrike.