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Modern World History Course 11.7 Syria: Long History, Current Conflict 90 Views
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Description:
The conflict in Syria has been escalating for years. Here's a video to help you start getting up to date.
Transcript
- 00:03
Well if you've watched the news over the last couple of years you've
- 00:05
probably heard the country of Syria mentioned once or twice or like a [TV with the channel 5 news on]
- 00:09
million times so break out your oven mitts because today we're gonna find out
- 00:14
why Syria is such a hot topic all right well let's start with Bashar Al-Assad [Person picks up Syria out of oven]
- 00:19
who as of 2017 is the current president of Syria he also happens to be a very
Full Transcript
- 00:26
bad man in 2011 the Syrian population got caught [Syrian people in the streets]
- 00:29
up in the quote Arab Spring unquote movement that was sweeping across the
- 00:34
Middle East and North Africa the Syrians wanted Assad out of power and Assad
- 00:39
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]
- 00:42
everything was sunshine and rainbows roll those ending credits
- 00:47
okay don't roll them yet shockingly enough no agreement was reached
- 00:51
Assad's crackdown on the protesters sparked a civil war that has torn Syria [Syria ruins from birds-eye view]
- 00:55
apart with support from the Shia segment of the Syrian population as well as
- 01:00
China and Russia Assad has managed to maintain his hold on the government and
- 01:05
the military he's also maintained his hold on Syria supply of chemical weapons [Map showing chemical weapons attack in Syria]
- 01:10
which he has used against his civilians and yeah that's illegal the anti-assad
- 01:15
forces are made up of Syria's Sunnis and various rebel factions the problem with
- 01:20
those rebel factions is that they're disparate they are rebels who want
- 01:24
democracy for Syria but there are even more rebels affiliated with Isis and
- 01:29
other terrorist organizations who are out to out-nadi Assad [Rebel groups in Syria]
- 01:35
well the rebels the nice ones anyway have the support of the US Great Britain
- 01:39
France Turkey Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not that this has helped
- 01:43
them all that much and as for all the civilians who really just wanted to go [Syrian civillians in the street]
- 01:47
about their lives well many of them are dead or hurt or being tortured or they
- 01:51
have fled Syria in the hopes that they'll be able to start over again with
- 01:55
a new life somewhere else if they're given a chance that is so yeah Syria [German protesters in an anti-refugee protest]
- 01:59
it's like the Gordian knot of security problems there's one string that's Assad
- 02:03
another string that's Isis another one that's pro-democracy rebels multiple
- 02:08
strings for all the countries that have a stake in this particular security
- 02:11
problem a string for the refugee crisis and a
- 02:14
string for the use of chemical weapons well there's just no untangling that [Knights fighting with a ball of string]
- 02:19
mess next time we want to end a video on rainbows well, you really should
- 02:24
just let us do that [rainbow in the distance]
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