When Did The Crisis Start?: What Is Happening To Syrians Caught in The War?
When Did The Crisis Start?: What Is Happening To Syrians Caught in The War?
When Did The Crisis Start?: What Is Happening To Syrians Caught in The War?
The number of innocent civilians suffering — more than 11 million people are displaced, thus far
— and the increasingly dire impact on neighboring countries can seem too overwhelming to
understand.
When did the crisis start?
Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011, part of the Arab Spring.
But the peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government's violent crackdown, and
rebels began fighting back against the regime.
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for
allegiance to another, in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state.
By July, army defectors had loosely organized the Free Syrian Army and many civilian Syrians
took up arms to join the opposition. Divisions between secular and Islamist fighters, and
between ethnic groups, continue to complicate the politics of the conflict.
An increasing number of Syrian refugees are fleeing across the border into Turkey,
overwhelming urban host communities and creating new cultural tensions. Mercy Corps
is working in these areas as well to help families meet their basic needs and find work.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees are also attempting the dangerous trip across the
Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece, hoping to find a better future in Europe. Not
all of them make it across alive. Those who do make it to Greece still face steep
challenges — resources are strained by the influx and services are minimal.
A new camp, Azraq, opened in April 2014, carefully designed to provide a sense of
community and security, with steel caravans instead of tents, a camp supermarket, and
organized "streets" and "villages."
Because Jordan’s camps are run by the government and the U.N. — with many partner
organizations like Mercy Corps coordinating services — they offer more structure and
support. But many families feel trapped, crowded, and even farther from any sense of
home, so they seek shelter in nearby towns.
Iraq has set up a few camps to house the influx of refugees who arrived in 2013, but the
majority of families are living in urban areas. And in Lebanon, the government has no
official camps for refugees, so families have established makeshift camps or find shelter
in derelict, abandoned buildings. In Turkey, the majority of refugees are trying to survive
and find work, despite the language barrier, in urban communities.