Political Relations

Political Relations

The news that chemical weapons were used by the army of Syria , on August 21, 2013, in Gouta in the suburb of the capital Damascus, was broadcast by several media outlets of the western world, raising the alert on armed conflicts occur in the country. Concern increased after the current U.S. President Barack Obama, announcing the intention to bomb the Arab country, with the aim of overthrowing the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad , appointed as responsible for the use of the bombs with sarin gas. For the preppy, interest in learning more about the conflict is related to two possibilities: the actions of U.S. armed intervention in the Middle East and the political and military arising from conflicts that became known as the Arab Spring .

Begin with the second possibility. The Arab Spring was the name given to a wave of riots that took place in North Africa and the Middle East from December 2010. Despite starting in the winter Northern Hemisphere, the mentioning of spring is made in reference to the Prague Spring, which occurred in 1968. The event that started the riots that shook - and still shake - the countries of the two regions was the immolation of a young Tunisian against the government of his country. From there, a series of riots swept the country, resulting in the fall of several governments, as in Tunisia itself. But the most emblematic cases occurred in Egypt, with the order of the government of Hosni Mubarak , and Libya, with the decline and death of Muammar Gadaffi . Syria was not left out of this wave of protests (Prados, 2005). In March 2011, the Syrian people took to the streets of cities across the country, calling for an end of the political regime led by Bashar Al-Assad. The rejection of claims and repression carried out by the military forces of Al-Assad increased political tensions, leading the opposition to take up arms against the government. Bashar Al-Assad came to power in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had begun his command in the country during the 1970s. The two represent the Alawites in Syria, a minority that professes Islam and makes up about 10% of the population. A political organization that maintains the power of Al-Assad's Baath party, the Renaissance, which has as part of its doctrine Arab nationalism and anti-imperialism. This attitude led the country to oppose U.S. policies in the Middle East, as well as the actions of the State of Israel, which had taken the state of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, during the Six Day War. Bashar Al-Assad in his government intended to initiate measures of political liberalization, such as the release of political prisoners, but that proved to be very limited. With the maintenance of restrictions on political participation of the population, the events of the Arab Spring breathed opposition to the regime. The struggle began for the rights of self-determination of the Syrian ...