educational video

Inside this article is a seven-minute video summarising what has happened in Syria. For those of you confused about this part of the world and what is happening, this clever video covers a lot in a simple way.

Some things this video does not cover: It does not go into the colonial history of similar interventions which have disorganised local power and built up to the current horrors. It does not talk about how many soldiers have died, nor of how the bulk of Syria's remaining population have fled to the government-controlled areas for safety. It does not talk about Russia's role in the area to support the government forces. Linking the creation of refugees to foreign-backed war in the region, it criticises the United States for not taking many refugees. However, for people outside Syria, the message needs to be that the west should stop creating refugees through war. This is a message that is entirely omitted by refugee activists in Australia, for instance, who seem to be quite uninterested in what is causing these floods of refugees. Australia effectively has almost no anti-war groups left. The video also does not mention the problem of growing water scarcity in Syria with Turkish diversion of the Euphrates, drought since 2006 and aquifer depletion in the context of a growing population. But drought and population growth are also matters seriously affecting other countries, such as California in the United States and most Australian states. The important difference is that California and Australia are not over-run by armed foreign-backed militia - as yet.