It was the start of the second group games of the FIFA World Cup 2018. The match was due to start at 11:45 NST. It was 11:15 PM, 30 minutes until play. In the meantime, I switched to the National Geographic. It was airing the documentary: “Unpublished - The fall of Syria and the rise of ISIS”.

There are always these headlines in the news about the things going on in Syria. I never actually understood them. I never had any idea about it. I watched the documentary and questioned myself what was happening in Syria. Everything else seemed less important as the documentary unfolded the insights of the things that have been happening in Syria.
It all started in 2011 when some teenagers wrote anti-government slogans on the walls accusing the government, led by Bashar al-Assad, to step down citing the lack of freedom in the country and the lack of effort by the government to end the economic woes in the country. The government reacted by arresting all those teenagers and torturing them. The incident is regarded as the start of the civil war. Though in fear, many civilians came to the streets and began demonstrating against the government to create pressure for their release. However, the government used armed forces and even killed some of its own citizens.

Some of the militants, working for the government, stepped down and began forming their own groups which they named as Free Syrian Army to fight against the government to bring it down and form a new democratic system.

Since that day, the war has kept growing. Neither the government nor the opposing civilians came to a peace agreement. Amid all these chaos, many children lost their lives. Assad showed no mercy toward the opposing civilians. He just wanted his regime to continue.

It is just so strange thinking about how the situation is for the people living in Syria. In our country and also in many countries, you wake up in the morning, eat your breakfast, go to work or school, come home, have dinner and then go to sleep. There’s freedom everywhere. We never felt that we should work for or earn freedom. We always thought that freedom is for free and take it for granted. But in Syria, you never know what’s going to happen the next minute. 

One thing that surprised me was the statement from the then US president Barrack Obama. He said the red line for the Syrian government would be the use of the chemical weapons. It was true, but something was very wrong in that statement. That is the time when I thought even people like President Obama cannot think to the core of the things that are happening.

I really want all the people to step aside from what they are doing and give some of their time to understand what’s happening in Syria. After all we are all humans and we should never forget that we are all same species.
God bless Syria.