A beginner's guide to the conflict in (and country of) Syria

The author missed one of the main reasons the west is involved in Syria: Energy. Syria sits right in between the oilfields in the Middle East and the oil consumers in Europe, so when a pipeline is built connecting the two, Syria has a vote for or against its completion. Since oil pipelines are both necessary and quite profitable, this can lead to very large disputes. Al Jazeera covered this last year here [1] where it was suggested that the West would be inclined to usurp Assad for someone more favorable to the West's long term energy interests. It seems their prediction was correct as the US (along with Britain and Turkey) is escalating relations with Syria, using chemical attacks and civil rights violations as justification.

The Guardian also has a great summary of the issue here. [2]

[1] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/au...

This passage : "As the conflict has gone on, more and more foreign powers have supplied their side of choice with aid, both tacit and direct. Whether it be Hizbollah joining the side of the Syrian regime via Lebanon, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran delivering the regime military, political and financial support"

is complete BS. Syria is an historical ally of Iran. It dates way before the protests, and the proof of that is in its control over Lebanon via the Hezbollah (which has been financed by Iran for more than 20 years).

If you want to understand arabs war in general, look at who's Shia and who is Sunni (and from time to time, when sunnis and shias don't fight each other, look at who is a jew).

Now for a quick sum up on the situation : Iran is trying to become a nuclear power. It's a shia country. Sunni don't want that (mainly saudi arabia and qatar). Syria is ruled by shias but the population is mostly sunni, so the ruling party is allied with Iran. Rebels are sunnis and mostly financed by saudi arabia and qatar.

Until there was chemical weapons involved, most occidental countries were quite happy to see iran fight saudi arabia using a proxy war in Syria. They sell weapons (Russia sells to Syria, US sells to Saudi Arabia), and enjoy seeing radical islamists and dictatorial regime kill each other instead of joining forces against Israel or bomb european cities.

But since Mr Obama said there was a "red line" and now that that "red line" has been crossed, US is forced to take side.

On a sidenote, the US has helped islamists gain power recently in Egypt, against dictatorial regimes, hoping for a middle term transition to democracy (a bit like what is hoped for Turkey), but that failed very recently with egyptians wanting islamist party out. So the whole US strategy in the middle east right now is a bit of a mess anyway.

More like "a westerners introduction to the Syria conflict, as narrated by our media". I do not claim to know what is true and what isn't, but I do know that I can't even read or understand the language of the majority in Syria. I have no insight into sunnis and shiites. In 2010, Syria ranked place 121 in internet penetration.

Frankly, I would not trust most any of the journalism on this topic. It's not malice or propaganda, it's just very likely to be very poorly researched.

Too bad the whole post fell short at the end with the Syrian model picture. So what, if people were ugly there, you would not care as much ? That was a really bad way to finish the article, which was otherwise well written.

A critical piece of the background is missing in my opinion - a lot of what is going on right now in ME, Central Asia and North Africa (I think that the events in all countries in that regions are one global trans national crisis) was set in motion by the Great Game, the colonial era, the messy unwinding of the Ottoman Empire and the less than stellar ending of the colonial regimes.

It has been brewing for a long time.

I actually have a Syrian friend who I've recently been talking to about the situation in Syria and what this man said is mostly true except that this has been brewing for a long time.

My friend's grandfather was sent to jail when his mother was 6, becuase his grandfather was a sunni politian against hafez assad's regim.

His grandfather was in jail for 20/30 years and he told me how his mother didnt even know or remember her father until he was let out and she got to know him.

He told me how when his mother was in school soldiers would drag sunni girls wearing hijab (face cover) by their hair out of the schools and they would never be seen again.

The government would treat Sunnis like second class citizens.

And something he didn't mention and most people don't know is that this very same thing is starting to happened in Lebanon.

The army of Lebanon is hizbollah which is a Shia terrorist organisation and they have been mistreating Sunnis and now Sunnis are starting to rebel. I have a friend that was living in Lebanon and moved back to Australia because he told me a civil war is going to start.

Another good (and slightly less flippant) introduction to the country and conflict from the WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/29...

I'm ashamed of my humanity after seeing this page.

http://www.therevoltingsyrian.com/post/50495350134/does-this...

This looks and smells like propaganda.

Only a single post, this one, has ever been posted on the account.

http://thehowardbealeshow.tumblr.com/archive

This post is seriously flawed as it completely forgot to mention the previous chemical attack. It happened a few months ago and there was a huge uproar by western states, specially US. But the media suspiciously quieted down as soon as many organisation including UN and French investigations proved that the rebels were behind the attack. No actions were taken then by any countries.

And now this article claiming to provide info on the conflict has not a single mention about it. I call BS!!

What horrifies me is people saying "Syria this" and "Syria that".

No, it's also consisting of many (perhaps mostly) innocent people like you and me who did nothing wrong and just want to live and get through their day peacefully.

It's not some unified entity. It's a lot of innocent people caught in the middle.

Very relevant on Hacker News.