Why Does The Civil War In Syria Continue?

The Geneva peace talks on Syria conference started last week and from the very beginning, it was deemed to be unsuccessful. As brutal clashes continue in Syria, the optimism of everyone involved seems to be wavering. Despite a number of attempts at a ceasefire, many peace plans, and foreign interventions, the war that started six years ago is not even close to an end.

What started as a series of protests in March 2011 has now become a multinational battlefield. Most civil wars finish when one of the sides loses because of exhaustion of resources or military defeat. The same would probably happen in Syria if it wasn’t for the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, whose involvement has meant weapon supply, money transfers, and increased political tensions. It all started when Iran, as a way to stand up against Sunni rebels, started endorsing the Assad government in 2012. A year later, rebels were joined by Sunni Gulf states. However, the religious motives are not the sole reason for other countries engaging in the war. American involvement started moderately, with the imposition of some limited sanctions against the Assad government. Over the next five years of the conflict, American involvement gradually increased, and it has been approximated that since August of 2014, US expenditure has risen to 11.5 million dollars per day. Even after Russia decided to back Assad, Barack Obama claimed he would continue his support. Since then, American participation has often been seen as both fuelling and being fuelled by America’s specific relation with Russia, and it is often observed that an intervention of one country is followed by a military or financial response by the other.

If this is really the case and Syrian war is fuelling the conflict between the US and Russia, will Trump’s stand on developing a friendly relationship with Putin change anything? So far, Trump has claimed that his priority is to fight against ISIS and his preferred way of doing it is by forming an alliance with the Russian and Syrian governments (a view that is quite opposite from Obama’s, who saw no other way to end this conflict but by abolishing Assad’s regime).

A recent and important contribution to this debate consists of multiple reports published on Aleppo. The Atlantic Council released information that Syrian and Russian armies deliberately targeted civilian-populated areas. Another report that was published by the Human Right Watch, showed that the Syrian army used chemical weapons during the Aleppo battle. Both could potentially be used to press charges against the Syrian government, but it is uncertain whether this would actually affect the US government’s actions.

The most recent plan, which was prepared by the Defence Secretary, is to send even more US troops to Syria. The estimated number now is 5,000 American soldiers, a considerably large number compared to the 500 stationed in Syria at the moment. This could help speed up the end of the war, but at what cost? Despite the conflict being more and more global, Syria still bears the brunt of the costs. Today’s death count has surpassed the number of 470,000 people killed. Even after the breakthrough in Aleppo, the living conditions in the city have not improved and people continue to have limited access to water and food.

Trump’s promise to create safe zones seems to be only a rhetorical olive branch, and with a deepened military involvement, the number of people killed every day is likely to rise even more. This is something that is clearly missing from his ‘peace’ plan.

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