Group items tagged

locked into the cities and towns

they f

had to compete

Palestinians

Iraqis

Syria was already a refuge

March 15, 2011

small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them

government saw them as subversives.

He ordered a crackdown

And the army,

responded violently.

Riots broke out

attempted to quell them with military

what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.

interpretation of Islam

the Syrian government is charged with using illegal chemical weapons

All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective

astonishing as they share no common language and come from a wide variety of cultures

slam has at least so far failed to provide an effective unifying force

all the rebels regard the conflict in Syria as fundamentally a religious issue

pwards of $150 billion

a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings.

How the victims and the perpetrators can be returned to a “normal life”

First, the war might continue.

Second, if the Syrian government continues or even prevails, there is no assurance that,

t will be able to suppress the insurgency.

Third,

Syria will remain effectively “balkanized”

demanding President Bashar al-Assad's resignation.

Opposition supporters began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and then to oust loyalist forces from their areas.

February 2012,

a new constitution

dropped an article giving the ruling Baath Party unique status as the "leader of the state and society"

denounced it

rebels seized control of large parts of the north and east of the country

National Coalition

Syrian people's "legitimate representative".

2013,

shifting in Mr Assad's favour,

government

recover territory

August 2013

chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus

destroy Syria's chemical weapons.

peace conference in Geneva in January 2014.

more than 100,000 people dead

millions from their homes.

The IS fighters were able to lodge so easily in the Sunni Arab heartlands because the people there had been largely alienated by the sectarian policies and practices of the Shia Arab-dominated Baghdad government under Nouri al-Maliki, who was finally prised out of the prime minister's office in August 2014.

gislation to empower the Sunnis by devolving security and financial responsibilities to the provinces has not happened.

Nor have measures to reverse the persecution of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, or the random arrests, detentions, and to assuage other Sunni grievances.

he US, who have about 3,500 military personnel training and advising Iraqi government forces on the ground, also seems to be aware that military muscle is not enough.

If that process continues and the militants are defeated, the way Iraq fits together - if it does - will be decided by who pushes them out, and how the resulting vacuum is filled.

osul is an almost wholly Sunni city with a population of about two million.

Some residents may still see IS - about 85% of whose fighters in Iraq are believed to be Iraqi - as their protectors against an Iranian-backed, Shia-dominated Baghdad government.

When the Iraqi army collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the IS eruption in June 2014, it was a motley array of hastily-assembled Shia irregulars, loosely banded into the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) that prevented the militants reaching Baghda

Ramadi gave a boost to the embattled Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.He has scant support even from his own Shia Daawa party, and is seen across the board by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians as weak, hesitant, lacking in leadership and unable to stand up to the militias.But there was a down-side to the Ramadi victory too: heavy destruction, and the displacement of the entire population.

Nor can the formula that finally and slowly worked in Ramadi simply be applied at Mosul. It took government forces with coalition backing seven months to regain Ramadi. Mosul is 10 times bigger.

He omitted to mention coalition air support, which would also clearly be crucial to the campaign.Some Iraqi analysts believe outside ground forces would also be needed. US military leaders, while reticent, clearly want to up the pace and have not ruled out more boots on the ground. In the absence of serious moves towards national reconciliation, one senior government figure also saw a campaign to retake Mosul as a vital way of forging national unity.