You need to delve into the topic of Arab Spring movement in 2011:
The Arab Spring was a series of pro-democracy uprisings that enveloped several largely Muslim countries, including Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain. The events in these nations generally began in the spring of 2011, which led to the name. However, the political and social impact of these popular uprisings remains significant today, years after many of them ended.
www.history.com
Arab Spring movement in other countries inspired Dera'a Protests in Syria in pursuit of political reforms:
In mid-March 2011, the Middle East had been in turmoil for weeks, as the Arab Spring, a wave of popular protest, rolled through the region. Long-ruling dictators had just been thrown out of office in Tunisia and Egypt, and news flooded in about the upheaval in Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain. But Syria, one of the harshest dictatorships in the region, had hardly stirred.
Now, that was about to change. Inspired by what was happening in the region and outraged by recent abuses at the hands of local security chiefs, a small group of men came out of Friday prayers in the southern city of Dera’a on the afternoon of March 18, 2011, determined to stage the city’s first public protest in decades.
Amid chants of “freedom” and “after today, there is no fear,” the demonstrators shouted complaints about brutal security chiefs, corrupt officials, poverty, joblessness, and other local grievances. There seem to have been no calls for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, but that made no difference in the eyes of the regime.
For decades, criticism of Syria’s ruling elite had been banned and even the faintest sign of open protest had triggered police crackdowns. With Arab dictators falling all around, the regime was tense and paranoid—and in Dera’a, it lashed out violently from the very beginning.
How exactly things transpired that Friday afternoon is hard to tell, but in an era of fake news and online forgeries, it is comforting to be able to say that we know for certain that the Dera’a protest happened. Many of the details may remain hazy, but the broad outlines are in full view, since Syria was the first war to play out fully in the age of cell phones and the Internet. Already that evening, shaky cell phone footage was drifting around on YouTube and being rebroadcast by world television: short clips of crowds moving across grainy screens, stone-throwing, helicopters buzzing in the sky, gunfire crackling somewhere in the background.
At least two young men were killed that Friday: Mahmoud Jawabreh and Hossam Ayyash, who are still today celebrated as martyrs by supporters of the Syrian opposition. New illegal demonstrations followed at their funerals on March 19, setting in motion a spiral of protest and repression in which ever-larger numbers of Syrians were arrested, wounded, and killed.
As news of the March 18 killings bounced around Facebook, YouTube, and Al Jazeera, demonstrations rose in solidarity with Dera’a in other Syrian towns—in cities like Damascus, Baniyas, and Latakia and in faraway villages unknown even to most Syrians.
That was the start of Syria’s revolution. After decades of enforced silence and ruthless dictatorship, it was, for its participants and sympathizers, a moment of genuine collective action and hope, but it would cruelly misfire into civil war and foreign proxy conflict.
The crisis that began in Syria in 2011, first as a peaceful uprising but then spiraling into civil war, has been among the most tragic and destructive
tcf.org
On the eighth anniversary of the Syrian uprising, scholar Wendy Pearlman writes about the people who risked their lives and raised their voices to fight the oppressive rule of Bashar al-Assad.
theconversation.com
The most serious challenge in two decades to 40 years of repressive rule by the Assad family erupted in violence when soldiers opened fire on peaceful demonstrators.
www.nytimes.com
At least 75 protesters reported killed across Syria during the “Great Friday” protests against Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
www.aljazeera.com
Assad administration ordered crackdown on Dera'a protests with use of force but it underestimated the scale of political dissent in the country; opposing forces banded together to establish Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Civil War broke out consequently.
In this analysis paper, Charles Lister describes the evolution of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) throughout the Syrian war, analyzes the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the group's structure and functionality, and offers recommendations to U.S. policymakers.
www.brookings.edu
Foreign interventions materialized as well: Iran and Russia decided to support Assad regime while Turkey decided to support FSA.
ISIS was an Iraqi movement but expanded to Syria in 2013.
The Islamic State – also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh – emerged from the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a local offshoot of al Qaeda founded by Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2004. It faded into obscurity for several years after the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007. But it began to reemerge in 2011. Over the next few years, it took advantage of growing instability in Iraq and Syria to carry out attacks and bolster its ranks.
The group changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2013. ISIS launched an offensive on Mosul and Tikrit in June 2014. On June 29, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi announced the formation of a caliphate stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq, and renamed the group the Islamic State.
A U.S.-led coalition began airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq on August 7, 2014, and expanded the campaign to Syria the following month. On October 15, the United States named the campaign “Operation Inherent Resolve.”
Entire history of ISIS movement in the region is captured through time in following link:
At its height, the Islamic State - also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh - held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq. By December 2017 it had lost 95 percent of its territory, including its two biggest properties, Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa...
www.wilsoncenter.org
Your assertion (
"NATO helibourned hundreds of thousands of it's foreign mercenaries such as ISIS into Syrian cities.") is FALSE. NATO arrived in Syria and joined hands with regional Kurd to fight ISIS in the region (Operation Inherent Resolve).
https://crsreports.congress.gov › ...PDF
Kurds in Iraq and Syria: U.S. Partners Against the Islamic State
Situation on the ground in Syria was like this for some years:
Assad administration + Iran + Russia vs. FSA + Turkey
ISIL vs. YPG + NATO
But NATO had internal tensions over how to handle ISIL in the region. Turkey had disagreements with USA on the matter of supporting Kurd:
WILLIAM HALE, Turkey, the U.S., Russia, and the Syrian Civil War, Insight Turkey, Vol. 21, No. 4, TURKEY’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY: A QUEST FOR AUTONOMY (Fall 2019), pp. 25-40
www.jstor.org
War in Syria was a tragedy on many counts with no sense of accountability in international forums.
UAE courting Bashar al-Assad shows that morality and principles take a back seat in Foreign Affairs in current times. UAE is courting many countries including Israel and India.
Not much of a surprise TBH.
Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabkh that is not sovereign Armenia.. But the Nakhcivan corridor is within sovereign Armenia there was never a military plan there.. atleast not until Armenia leaves CSTO..
