Blog 8: Civil War or Revolution

Recent unrest in the Middle East began with uprisings in Tunisia that spilled over into nearly every country in the region. Egypt and Libya were successful in getting rid of their corrupt leaders, Mubarak and Qaddafi, but other countries stopped the rebels before it was too out of hand. Syria however has been going hard against President al-Assad since March of 2011 (Times).
Before all of this, Syria had struggled with neighboring countries. Issues with Israel and Lebanon mark Syria’s past. Syria supported Hezbollah and Hamas, anti-Israel groups, causing sanctions to be enforced. These actions isolated Syria from the region and the world (BBC). Their own uprising was spurred from their success of neighbors, but theirs has become the longest and hardest fought. It has been estimated that around 40,000 civilians have died in the Syrian conflict, over 400,000 people have taken refuge in other countries, and 1.2 million people within Syria were displaced from their homes (Times). It is clear from these statistics why the problems in the Middle East have been in the news for almost two years.
 In the past few days the situation has worsened still. The president continues to resist requests to step down. He firmly warned the West not to intervene with their own militaries. While it seems as though the government is the enemy, recent actions by the rebels have caused people to reconsider. Their use of thoughtless violence, brutal murders, and senseless destruction have made Syrian’s question the group who they previously thought was taking the moral high ground. Over ten thousand civilians fled Syria yesterday alone (Times).
While it is fair to say that what happened in Egypt and Libya were revolutions, Syria’s conflict is sitting in the grey area between a revolution and a civil war. There are two sides within the same boundaries that disagree enough to take up arms. The death toll is not an issue in Syria’s case either, since over forty thousand people have been killed. The most essential difference between the two acts of political violence is whether or not the rebels win and overhaul the government (Samuels). That means that you cannot determine what the conflict is until it is over. It is only in hindsight that you can tell what the violence can be classified as. The rest of the area is going through these revolutions and trying to move past the old regimes into something better. Once the Syrian conflict is labeled as a civil war, then it is almost a death sentence for the opposition. Civil wars are not won by the rebels; it would not be a civil war if they did. The word revolution, on the other hand, is used more often than it should be. It is not exactly synonymous with uprising or rebellion. We may think of a revolution as an armed conflict, but not always to the extent that a government is being overthrown. The Syrian conflict is somewhere in between. Civil war and revolution are clear terms once the conflict is over, but during these times of political uncertainty, where people are fighting for their lives against a corrupt government that just will not give in, needs its own term. For not it is just a conflict lost in limbo between civil war and revolution.


BBC. Syria Profile. 24 October 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703856.
Samuels, David J. Comparative Politics. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2013.
The New York Times. Syria. 9 November 2012. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html.