Conflict in Syria

1. There is a lot of emphasis in this class on keeping current. Looking at every media outlet from MSNBC and the New York Times to Fox News and Wall Street though I see the most important story of today lacks coverage. It is neither the presidential election nor the Emmys, but the full on Civil War going on in Syria.

2. Why is this story so important? Why should we care about a civil war going on half a world away? The fact is that almost 30,000 people have died due to this conflict. Including over 23,000 innocent civilians. That’s women and children dying in constantly every day, whose only crimes are living in contested areas (Halaby).

3. This number is only going to grow at a faster rate. Syria’s government has begun to arbitrarily use its air superiority to bomb areas containing rebels and civilians. The result has been massive amounts of civilian casualties. Last month alone 5,000 civilians died, and this can get even worse very quickly (Halaby).

4. General Sillu, former head of Syria’s chemical in a recent interview said, "We were in a serious discussion about the use of chemical weapons, including how we would use them and in what areas. We discussed this as a last resort - such as if the regime lost control of an important area such as Aleppo” (Frenkel).

5. Syria has the third largest supply of chemical weapons in the world. Their government also scud missiles amongst other technologies to deploy them. Sillu said that these discussions focused on use in some of the most densely populated civilian areas of the country. This could potentially lead to millions of deaths (Frenkel).

6. Even more alarming were discussions on arming Hezbollah with chemical weapons. Sillu claimed this was a big possibility if the regime was desperate. These weapons have the potential to kill many civilians in Israel sparking an armed response by Israel to Lebanon, Syria and possibly Iran, and chaos throughout the middle-east (Frenkel)....