To fully understand the crisis that is now under way in Syria, you have to go all the way back to 1946. During this time, Syria declared independence and they became a parliamentary republic but they also had a chaotic mess of a government. This government, within the span of 10 years, created four constitutions and had massive amounts of changes in government that did not help to stabilize the country. In 1956, Syria signed a pact with the Soviet Union, which stated that Syria would explore communism in exchange for military weapons and what not (probably not the very best plan). In 1958, Syria and Egypt actually became the same country, called the United Arab Republic, before Syria decided to leave and become its own nation again in 1961. There was, of course, a lot of political turmoil between the two nations at this time, but it ended in the Ba’ath Party taking control of Syria.
You may have heard of the Ba’ath Party because of their involvement in Iraq, but to put it simply, Ba’athism is a non-religious political philosophy that advocates for socialist values for Arab states. They also wanted to unite all of the Arab states to create a utopia – this idea clearly held no weight. In 1970, the Minister of Defence Hafez al-Assad led a bloodless military overthrow of the government. Al-Assad then becomes the Syrian President. Under him there was the first stable period in Syrian history. He established a constitution, created a state-run economy which had huge growth, but he also lead a terrible invasion on Israel (in 1973) and later entered the Lebanese civil war (1976) and started the Syrian invasion of Lebanon. Another important thing to note is that Al-Assad was Alawi and tried to bring his religion into the mainstream culture of Syria. Alawi is a branch of the Shia Islam, but believe different things than the Shia.
Now we fast track to the year 2000, when President Al-Assad dies. This causes the parliament to pass a law that reduces the minimum age of a President from 40 to 34 (it was a coincidence that Al-Assad’s son Bashar just happened to be 34). Bashar Al-Assad was almost immediately elected President with 97.9% of the vote (seeing as how no one else was allowed on the ballot). The Syrian people thought that Bashar Al-Assad would bring reform to the country, but he did no such thing. This is the case especially during the time of the 2011 Arab Spring, when there were many pro-democracy protests in Syria. President Al-Assad executed soldiers who refused to fire at civilians, bombed entire towns, and allowed for massive torture and arrest. It is estimated that about 10,000 people (majority of which were unarmed citizens) have been killed in Syria.
Syria finds itself in the middle of a civil war, where there is no country coming to its aid. The UN Security Council attempted to act on this but both Russia and China vetoed all resolutions about Syria. For the moment, there has not been a stop in the violence in Syria despite the best efforts of the international community. Syria has been expelled from the Arab League, and Syria has numerous economic sanctions which are affecting its economy but so far nothing has moved Al-Assad to resign. But even if he were to resign, it’s difficult to predict the future for Syria. It’s important to realize that the crisis in Syria isn’t a religious or land issue, it’s an issue of a brutal government that is using all of it’s resources to try and shut up its own people. We can only hope for the best and that the international community takes swift action to help these people.