The Syrian Uprising is the ongoing internal violent conflict in Syria, starting from early 2011 to this day. It occurred as a part of Arab Spring, a series of revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in Middle East countries toward the monarch type rules (actually in tends heavily to tyranny) who has dominant control over the country, asking for a revolution toward democracy. It all started in Tunisia, when a fruit merchant named Mohammed Bouazizi self-immolated himself as an act of protest toward police corruption and ill treatment who confiscated his goods, causing a movement of raged protesters that manage to overthrown the current reigning regime. Soon, it spreads all over the Middle East such as in Egypt Uprising where President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown from his presidential seat and Libya Uprising which forced Muammar Gaddafi to resigned from his ruler seat. As such, the Syrian Uprising is the latest conflict in conjunction with the domino effect caused by Arab Spring.
Public demonstration initially began on 26 January 2011 when Hasan Ali Akleh pured gasoline on himself in similar manner to Bouazizi which sparks massive movement of protests against the reigning government on various social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter on 3 February which is also known as the "Day of Rage". Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad from Ba'ath Party which has ruled for nearly five decades following the rise of the previous ruler, Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, who led the 8 March Revolution in 1963 to overthrow the government then and managed to gain the ruler seat, signing the establishment of Ba'ath Party government. Since then, he has become the ruler of Syria for more than 30 years till his death in 2000, in which he is succeeded by his son, Bashar. Following the failure of peaceful and cooperative protests, the protesters begin a series of fill-fledged demonstration. However, instead of listening to protesters demand, the government started to take counter-measure actions using violence. The soldiers were given order to put down the protest waves at any cost, even it means firing to the middle of unarmed protesters while they were doing a demonstration. Furthermore, according to United Nations report, soldiers who refused to shoot down the protesters will be labelled as defectors and be shot down by their own comrades in place. This, in turn develop the events to a bloody conflict between the government and the protesters which formed their own armed groups called Free Syrian Army, consisting army deserters and civilians alike.
In response to this prolonged bloody conflict which seriously violated human rights, United Nations has taken several actions to tone down the conflict and try to take it to peaceful solution. On 18 March, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described the use of deadly force against protesters by the Syrian authorities as "unacceptable". In a presidential statement on 3 August, the United Nations Security Council condemned "the widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities". The Western sides of United Nations Security Council (US, British , and France) suggest a resolution steps needs to be taken to resolve the conflict. However, this was vetoed twice by Russia and China which apparently supported Syrian government. Speculation arises that they have invested quite heavy in Syrian oil reserves and companies which brings them to take precaution against the effort from Western sides to take the control of Syrians oils.
I think what UN should do is first getting their voices united as one, which is to prevent this bloody war from going any longer that caused more blood to be shed. The value of people's life should be the primary concern before the independent interest of each country. Both the parties (the government and the armed protesters) should be pressed by international countries to stop the conflict and opt for more peaceful solutions, facilitated by third party such as United Nations. For this to happened, each sides must be willing to trust other parties to not take the advantage from temporary ceasefire (permanent if possible) until a resolution is made. This is in conjunction with Kofi Annan's recent effort to facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnics and beliefs.
So, do you have an idea about how to solve this matter? Care to share it with us?
