10 years on, no end to suffering in war-torn Syria
- Protests that started in 2011 led to the world’s worst conflict in a generation
- An estimated 400,000 people have been killed in 10 years, millions displaced
After a decade of unfathomable violence and human tragedy that has made Syria the defining war of the early 21st century, the fighting has tapered off but the suffering hasn’t.
In 2011, Bashar al-Assad and his government briefly looked like another domino about to fall in the whirlwind of pro-democracy revolts sweeping the Middle East.
Ten years later, Assad is still there, a pyrrhic victor offering no credible prospects of reconciliation for the Syrian people and exercising limited sovereignty over a land left prey to foreign powers.
In late January 2011, the uprisings that toppled dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya became known as the “Arab Spring” and the contagious nature of the region’s revolts became obvious.
It took time for the wave of protests to take hold in Syria, where demonstrations had been banned for half a century and the government seemed more entrenched than anywhere else in the region.
Some of the first gatherings, such as vigils outside the Libyan embassy, were ostensibly in support of the other uprisings and not a direct challenge to the four-decade-old rule of the Assad clan.
“We would call for freedom and democracy in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but we were actually chanting for Syria,” prominent Syrian activist Mazen Darwish recalled.