For the past five years, Syria has been a target of war. Multiple rebel groups including ISIS have been destroying what it has to offer: beautiful cities, historical landmarks, and the millions of innocent lives of men, women and children. Walking in the same footsteps as his father as president of Syria, Basher al-Assad has tried to take control of all he can to prevent any more horrible attacks. However, with only Russia to aid them, it seems almost impossible.

It was only this past year that, I really began to pay attention to the devastation occurring in Syria. New bombings splashed all over the news, and we saw appalling photographs of blameless injured men, women, children, and millions of refugees fleeing the country. According to USA Today, in 2015, an estimated 200,000 people had died, 1 million people were injured, and 4 million people were displaced.

With this entire situation, two things pull at me the most. To start, we ask ourselves why Russia is the only country helping and why have the United Nations and United States not helped. Syria is blown to bits, and we just sit back and watch it all happen. I know that the situation is much more complicated than just sending the United States or the United Nations to help automatically, but there must be a way.

The second problem is that not many people know about what is happening in Syria. Young adults tend to be the most oblivious. Teenagers are on all different types of social media, but may not always pay attention to national news.
IVCC freshman Abby Jordon said, “I think the majority of teens are uninformed because they are busy paying more attention to social media, and honestly, sometimes teenagers aren’t always concerned about what is going on in the world outside of their own.”

We both agreed that this is something that should drastically change, and we should try to become more aware nationally, help all that we can, and spread awareness. We should be more responsible in knowing what is going on in the world, so we can work to improve in the future.