Final Blog Post- Jasmin Rezaie

Throughout the course of the semester my group and I analyzed the Syrian Civil War and its effect on the International community. It became quite evident that this was not a war just within a country, but many other countries had interests in the outcome too. For large economic powers such as Russia, the Unites States, and China it created tension. When the news broke that they believed the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on its own people, which is banned by international standards, the United States wanted to intervene. Three of the major members of the United Nations were at odds which created this tension. They came to an agreement to remove all chemical weapons in Syria, which appeared to fix that problem. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has already gotten rid of the factories to make these weapons, but it will take a bit more time for them to remove all the stockpiles of weapons from Syria. It is dangerous for this team to do their job due to the ongoing violence in Syria. Now cooperation from both sides of the war is important to the U.N. sanctioned mission. The war continues to carry on with no apparent end in sight. Once again it threatens to drag in other neighboring countries.

            Each week my group and I would meet on Thursday night to write our blog post together. Usually we discussed the events of that week and what we had seen in the news. Then we would all individually research the news for Syria for that week some more. Then we would compile that news into one summary, and together we would all contribute ideas on what to write. That is how we wrote our blog posts. Working as a group caused me to actually process the information so that I could or someone else could explain our findings to the rest of the group. The paragraph about its relation to international politics forced us to discuss our ideas about its effects in order to write that paragraph.

            I learned that wars that seem like civil wars really effect the international community because of alliances, the presence of international institutions like the U.N., and individual interests of each country. For some the Syrian Civil War is an essentially a proxy war. I learned a lot about the key role of international institutions in situations such as this, and the role of the United Nations specifically in diffusing the problem. By working in a group I learned that the best ideas come from a combination of other’s views.