Ten years ago this week, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in the southern Syrian city of Daraa. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, those initially peaceful uprisings morphed into a brutal and senseless proxy war—one of the most heartbreaking conflicts I have ever witnessed.
A decade of war means that the lives of an entire generation of Syrians have been defined by bombs, deprivation, death, and displacement. A decade of war means a society that will take half a century to heal. In the case of Syria, where Assad—the country’s own head of state—has burned his country down, there is also the issue of monstrous war crimes: chemical weapons used against civilians; tens of thousands of arbitrary detentions and disappearances; rape and torture. According to a recent report by the United Nations Commission on Inquiry in Syria, the war has been marked by the most heinous violations of humanitarian standards and human rights, including violence by the regime on its own population on a genocidal scale. As always, civilians bear the brunt of the atrocities.
