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Well if you've watched the news over the last couple of years you've

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probably heard the country of Syria mentioned once or twice or like a [TV with the channel 5 news on]

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million times so break out your oven mitts because today we're gonna find out

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why Syria is such a hot topic all right well let's start with Bashar Al-Assad [Person picks up Syria out of oven]

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who as of 2017 is the current president of Syria he also happens to be a very

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bad man in 2011 the Syrian population got caught [Syrian people in the streets]

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up in the quote Arab Spring unquote movement that was sweeping across the

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Middle East and North Africa the Syrians wanted Assad out of power and Assad

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wanted to stay in power and they reached an agreement hugged it out and [Man looking for a hug with a rainbow in the background]

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everything was sunshine and rainbows roll those ending credits

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okay don't roll them yet shockingly enough no agreement was reached

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Assad's crackdown on the protesters sparked a civil war that has torn Syria [Syria ruins from birds-eye view]

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apart with support from the Shia segment of the Syrian population as well as

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China and Russia Assad has managed to maintain his hold on the government and

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the military he's also maintained his hold on Syria supply of chemical weapons [Map showing chemical weapons attack in Syria]

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which he has used against his civilians and yeah that's illegal the anti-assad

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forces are made up of Syria's Sunnis and various rebel factions the problem with

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those rebel factions is that they're disparate they are rebels who want

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democracy for Syria but there are even more rebels affiliated with Isis and

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other terrorist organizations who are out to out-nadi Assad [Rebel groups in Syria]

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well the rebels the nice ones anyway have the support of the US Great Britain

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France Turkey Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not that this has helped

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them all that much and as for all the civilians who really just wanted to go [Syrian civillians in the street]

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about their lives well many of them are dead or hurt or being tortured or they

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have fled Syria in the hopes that they'll be able to start over again with

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a new life somewhere else if they're given a chance that is so yeah Syria [German protesters in an anti-refugee protest]

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it's like the Gordian knot of security problems there's one string that's Assad

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another string that's Isis another one that's pro-democracy rebels multiple

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strings for all the countries that have a stake in this particular security

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problem a string for the refugee crisis and a

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string for the use of chemical weapons well there's just no untangling that [Knights fighting with a ball of string]

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mess next time we want to end a video on rainbows well, you really should

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just let us do that [rainbow in the distance]

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