A confusing international strategy, a brutal regime, and a turbulent Middle East drove Syria to become a hell on earth.
Since 1970, Hafez Assad and his son and successor, Bashar al Assad, have turned Syria into one of the world's most thorough police states.
According to a report in Business Insider, “The Assads secured their rule through violence: 20,000 people were killed when Hafez Assad crushed an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. Syrian militarily occupied Lebanon in the 1990s, meddling in the politics of their polyglot neighbor and helping the terrorist group Hizbollah become the country's most dominant force.”
It all began on March 18, 2011 when Syrian government forces killed six people during a peaceful protest in Dara'a.
The ‘stability’ that the Assads had supposedly been so effective at fostering was rapidly exposed as a fraud.
It became a regular phenomenon in Syria as massacres of protestors were frequent occurrences by the end of April, and by summer the country was engaged in a full-blown civil war.
This led jihadist fighters from the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra — as well as Al Qaeda in Iraq to take advantage of the disturbance in the region.
Al Qaeda in Iraq later changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS.
It was predicted during the crisis of late 2011 and early 2012, how bad things would get.
By October 2015, as many as 320,000 people were killed, while over 11 million were driven from their homes.
Millions of Syrian refugees somehow managed to make it to European countries where they are not welcomed any more.
ISIS, a brutal jihadi group with dreams of regional and global conquest made Syria a continued battle ground to no end.
Here are some pictures of Syrian people and cities that were destroyed in the civil war.
Click next to see how a country transformed into hell on earth in just five years
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