The Wests Obligation: The Syrian Crisis

For the past five years, the Syrian civil war has been the cause of the estimated 4.2 Million Syrian civilians fleeing their war-torn communities. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s newly elected Prime minister, has announced his plan to take in 25,000 refugees through the next few months leaving many Canadian citizens up in arms. With islamophobia, the prejudice or hatred against Muslims or Islam, becoming a dominant ideology in many close-minded individuals heads, it is understandably challenging to convince an entire population to accept refugees as their new neighbours. Many of these people who are against the movement towards settling Syrian refugees in Canada don’t understand what is really going on.

In 2011, protesters in Syria were demanding political freedom following the brutal arrest and torture of some high school students who spray painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and his political party has dominated the country for over fifty years creating a corrupt and violent government. They do not tolerate disunity, and as a result, several protesters were shot dead. This triggered even more protests where people angrily took the streets insisting that the president should resign. Al-Assad’s powerful government stepped in and fought back with harsh violence. This triggered the upbringing of rebel brigades and other groups that supported the resistance, the start to the Syrian civil war. People who at first were carrying arms to protect themselves quickly turned around and used them to fight back. At the end of August 2015 it was estimated that about 250,000 people had been killed due to the civil war, about 30,000 of them being children.

The extremist anti-western militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), has capitalized on the utter chaos of their country. They have devoted their time to taking over and creating an independent Islamic state in many areas of Syria. Through the heinous and severe punishments they conflict on those who do not accept their views, ISIS has been able to terrorize and spark fear like no other in many Syrian citizens. With conflict ever evolving, Syrians are fleeing by the millions.

Over 4.2 million people have fled Syria clinging to hope for a better tomorrow. Many take refuge in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey. These refugee camps are far from anything that showcases a light at the end of the tunnel. Nada Sidani, a Canadian nurse, travelled to Lebanon to help those in need. She describes the conditions of the camps as being “utterly inhumane” and states that the people in these camps are “like you and me, who before the war had a life, had a livelihood, who contributed to the country's economy. They got stuck in a very brutal war”. These people live under conditions that many westerners could not even begin to imagine. The brutal reality of war has forced them to