In 2021, the terrible war in Syria has turned 10 years
old, and seems to have no end.
Main events of the war
Ten years have passed since peaceful protests broke out against the government of President Bashar Assad in March 2011 because of the so-called “Arab Spring”, it triggered a popular uprising which quickly turned into a real civil war. The hardest fighting of the war has taken place in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria. The United States had a leading role in the management of the war, during the years of Obama’s presidency, but especially during Trump’s presidency. In fact, the United States did not intervene in the war until the first use of chemical weapons in the conflict happened in August 2013. The first American air attack occurred in September 2014; an attack on the Syrian territories controlled by the Islamic State, which had proclaimed its "caliphate" in Syrian and Iraqi territories. Subsequently, Assad’s Syrian army suffered its first defeats against the Islamic State, for this reason Russia and then Turkey intervened in support of Assad. The conflict continued and in 2017, for the first time, the United States launched a barrage of missiles as a direct attack on the Syrian government. In 2018, after Assad had recaptured all the suburbs of the city of Damascus, Great Britain, the United States and France launched military attacks on Syria to punish Assad who was accused of using chemical weapons again and killing many civilians. Then the United States decided to establish new sanctions against the countries which supported Syrian military operations. Despite a decade of fighting and a destroyed country, Assad remains firmly in power.
Syria today is suffering a serious economic and humanitarian crisis, and is divided into three parts. An al-Qaeda group dominates the northwestern province of Idlib, while Turkish-backed rebels control some stretches along the Turkish border. The Syrian Kurdish forces supported by the United States control about a quarter of the country in the northeast. Assad controls the rest of the country.
The victims of war
During this terrible war, thousands of people have been killed or wounded and hundreds of thousands have been forced to leave their homes, making Syria conquer the sad record of being the country with the largest population of internally displaced people in the world, over 6 million. However the first victims of this war are children; since the beginning of hostilities, more than 2 million children have not been able to study and go to school and another 1.3 million are at great risk of losing education. In the country 80% of the population lives below the poverty line and 6.2 million children are at risk of starvation because their families cannot afford enough food every day. For ten years Syrian girls and boys have known nothing but war, violence and destruction.
Humanitarian aid for a devastated people
Many humanitarian associations have intervened since
the early days of the conflict to bring relief to Syrian children and families,
but there is still much to do. Save the Children, Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative and World Vision analysed the images of Idlib before and after the
conflict: almost half of the territory was abandoned by the fleeing population
and the refugee camps have more than doubled since 2017. The children in Syria
are hungry, cold and suffering. Many have known only war and desperate escapes
in their short lives.
Since the beginning of the crisis, Save the Children has provided support to 4.2 million people, including 2.6 million children. They operate in 4 health facilities and 7 nutrition centres in the North-West of the country, while in the North-East they support 3 health clinics and 3 mobile centres for mothers and children. They provide support to 125 schools, are engaged in responding to the needs of families through the distribution of food, hygiene kits, blankets, shelter against the cold, other basic necessities and psychological support.
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