The Religion of Peace

• The population of Syria before the civil war began in 2011 was 22 million;
• The civil war has displaced 6.3-million Syrians, mostly Sunnis;
• There is an estimated 4.9-million internally displaced Syrians living in besieged or isolated regions of the country;
• Estimates of the numbers of Syrians killed in the past five years range between 400,000 and 500,000;
• Each month of the conflict results in 30,000 people suffering traumatic injuries;
• Combined, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey shelter 4.8-million Syrian refugees, half of whom are children; 
• Syrian refugees who have fled to Europe by sea in 2015 number one million, with four thousand believed to have drowned;

Initially, when Syrian civilians began leaving their homes, the towns and cities and farms to escape the immediate effects of the conflict, they believed their absence would be temporary, that they would be able to return in a matter of weeks, months, certainly not the years they have now been displaced, with no end in sight, as the president of their country continues his unabated violent war against his own people whom he scornfully names "terrorists".

That nomenclature, he seems to believe, is all the proof needed that his war is a just one; destroying the lives of terrorists, not that a Shiite administration views his Sunni sect population as enemies of the state. No civilized country of the world targets its civilian population with chemical weapons, with artillery, with barrel bombs, enlisting the aid of other Shiite countries to help it subdue its own citizens from demanding their human rights. The Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah finds this work right down their alley.

The externally displaced Syrians, living as refugees in neighbouring countries, cannot work to earn a living as the legal convention recognizing their status as refugees does not permit them to work where they have found haven. Which hasn't stopped desperate families from sending out their children to find work, to help sustain the family's needs. Not all refugees live in crowded refugee camps, many who fled with whatever of their goods and money they could preserve, live in host-country cities, finding their financial resources inexorably dwindling.

The very poorest of the poor Syrians hadn't the wherewithal in goods or money to flee externally, they are the internally displaced who huddle together for safety in towns and villages that often come under direct fire by the regime's forces, their slaughter considered their just due for 'supporting' the rebel cause based on the fact that the rebels are Sunnis rebelling against the minority Shiite Alawite government which has denied them equality rights, and the civilians are also Sunnis, earning the state's enmity.

Foreign humanitarian groups have been working alongside various arms of the United Nations, where they are permitted to give aid, providing the Syrian refugees in the countries of haven with water and shelter and protection from sexual exploitation. Local aid agencies do their best to alleviate the plight of the refugees, as well. The civilian Sunni Syrian men, women and children who fled the ravaged Sunni half of Aleppo were in a state of universal shock from the effects of the siege and the continual bombing, many injured at a time when hospitals and medical clinics in eastern Aleppo were targeted and destroyed by Russian and Syrian bombs.

Most of the world's refugees have resulted from fanatical Islamism. Muslims who have chosen to wage jihad as a symbol of their faith and their response to the Koranic injunction to all Muslim faithful to obey the religion's objective to proselytize using whatever means it takes to attain the goal of a worldwide caliphate of the faithful. From the Middle East through North Africa, conflict has created a greater number of displaced people and refugees who have experienced violence, torture, murder and rape than from any other cause, all attributed to Islam.

A Syrian woman, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, reacts as she stands with her children in Aleppo’s Fardos neighbourhood on December 13, 2016, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters (Picture: Getty)

"Last night we were able to reinforce our new defense lines and to build some blast walls on the new borders. Today the regime forces tried to sweep through our new defense lines [in town of Azaz] but they haven’t been able to do so yet. But the problem is the barbaric, unprecedented bombardment and shelling that you can’t even imagine."
"Seventy-nine of them [residents who attempted escape] were executed at the barricades. The rest — everyone under 40 — were taken to warehouses that look more like internment camps. They face an unknown fate."
"This morning 20 women committed suicide in order not to be raped."
Abdullah Othman, head, Consultative Council in the Levant Front rebel group, Aleppo, Dec13/16