Stamford, U.S.A. – AmeriCares is rushing a delivery of emergency medical aid for families fleeing the violence in Syria. An air shipment containing antibiotics, wound care supplies, pain relievers and other critically needed medical aid is expected to arrive in Jordanthis week where it will be delivered to a partner organization providing medical care for 30,000 Syrian refugees who have fled for safety.

The shipment also contains medicines for refugees who have diabetes, respiratory problems and other chronic health conditions. Nearly 40,000 Syrian refugees are currently registered in Jordan, although the actual refugee population is believed to be as high as 150,000. The refugee crisis has intensified in recent days with the mass exodus from Aleppo, a city that once housed a population of 2.5 million people, due to the escalation in fighting between the Syrian government and rebels.

“With tens of thousands of people flooding densely populated urban areas and tent camps in Jordan, the aid organizations on the ground are struggling to meet the demand for primary care services,” said AmeriCares Director of Emergency Response Garrett Ingoglia. “This emergency aid shipment is meeting an urgent request for the most basic medical supplies. Refugees are particularly susceptible to disease and face increased health risks because disease can spread rapidly in crowded living conditions.”

AmeriCares, through its Medical Outreach Program, also supplied medical aid to an Indiana physician who recently traveled to Turkey to aid Syrian refugees injured in the conflict. Dr. Ammar Ghanem, a Syrian-born intensive care unit doctor from Fort Wayne, spent three weeks working in Turkey in the spring and early summer providing medical care to Syrian refugees and patients with gunshot wounds and traumatic brain injuries crossing the borders. He used medications and supplies donated by AmeriCares to help stop bleeding in some patients, as well as to suture wounds and treat infections.

AmeriCares has been delivering critically needed medicines and relief supplies to the Middle East for more than 25 years in response to civil conflict as well as humanitarian crises.

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The conflict in Syria rages on as the Battle of Aleppo enters its third week on August 2. Since March of 2011, when the first anti-government protests began in Syria, around 200,000 have been made refugees and around 20,000 people have been killed.

Aleppo, a commercial hub in Syria and the city with the largest population, is one of the most active combat locations in Syria. It is a key location since the winning of Aleppo for the rebels could mean the end of the Assad regime. BBC’s Jim Muir wrote, “The longer the situation remains unresolved, the stronger the rebels’ grip may become, as they pursue their goal of establishing a ‘liberated area’ in Aleppo and neighboring Idlib province to use as a springboard against the regime’s last stronghold, Damascus.”

Many rebels have taken hold of several districts within the city of Aleppo and Assad has sent tanks, helicopter gunships, and war planes to attack it.

On August 2 the rebel Tawheed Brigade left Tal Rifaat to give aid to the rebels in Aleppo. Also early in the morning of August 2 the rebels attacked Menagh army base with a stolen tank. Menagh is from where Assad has been launching several of his artillery and air strike attacks on Aleppo. The rebels pulled out after a short time with one rebel fighter claiming, “We hit the airport using a tank that we captured from the Assad army. We attacked the airport a few times but we have decided to retreat at this time.” However, several reports claim that the retreat may have been due to the war planes that attacked the rebels.

In Aleppo, rebels put a video online that showed them executing several prisoners; the act is being called a war crime by several organizations. The rebels also claim to have taken three police stations within the city in the last week. Also last month, Assad’s forces managed to drive most of the rebels out of Damascus and began to push an offensive on Aleppo.

Tensions between the two sides have also risen from the government activity in Damascus and the rebel activity in Aleppo. Assad, who has been in power since the death of his father in 2001, launched two attacks in Damascus on Thursday in which soldiers went door to door asking people to show their papers. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed “the bodies of 43 people were recovered. Some of them had been summarily executed.”

In the last month Assad’s top four advisers, including his own brother-in-law, were killed in a bombing. Since then, Assad has been in hiding and has only issued pre-recorded statements.

On Wednesday, August 1 the mobile phone connections were cut for the city of Aleppo leading many to believe that the government would launch an attack. In fact, on Thursday the government forces attacked the Salaheddine district in Aleppo, although most were repelled by the rebels.

The problems worsen even further for the citizens of Aleppo since the city is beginning to run out of food. The World Food Program issued a statement claiming, “The humanitarian situation is deteriorating in Aleppo and food needs are growing rapidly.”

The world’s response

Many believe that outside governments should be helping the rebels although since Russia and China are in favor of keeping Assad in power, there has been little consensus. The Security Council has created three separate resolutions that have been vetoed by Russia and China as too extreme because it would cause a regime change led by an outside power, violating sovereignty.

The UN General Assembly will be voting on a resolution written by Saudi Arabia shortly that would support the Syrian rebels.

President Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, July 30 to “coordinate efforts to accelerate a political transition in Syria.” Although Obama will not send direct military assistance, he does seem to want to support the rebels. The Treasury Department has recently decided that it will give a license to the Syrian Support Group that will aid the rebels financially.

Jordan, a bordering country to Syria, has been helping Syrian refugees enter their country. However, in recent days Syrian soldiers shot at Jordanian troops that were helping the refugees to cross the border.

On August 2, the UN-Arab League joint special peace envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, has announced that he will not renew his contract when it ends in August, effectively quitting his job. He claims that the Syrian people “desperately need action” but he believes that the UN Security Council is “finger pointing and name calling.”

Annan is the author of the six point peace plan that was introduced a few months ago. It called for an end to all military conflict, peaceful political negotiations, and more freedom of expression for the Syrian people. Unfortunately, neither the rebels nor the Syrian government upheld all sides of the plan and the situation quickly deteriorated.

Annan has blamed both sides in the Syrian conflict for the lack of peace but has also said that the problems were “compounded by the disunity of the international community.” He went on to state, “Syria can still be saved from the worst calamity – if the international community can show the courage and leadership necessary to compromise on their partial interests for the sake of the Syrian people – for the men, women, and children who have already suffered far too much.”

Currently it is unknown who will fill Annan’s position at the end of August, but most assuredly few are willing to take it.

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Two wars are being waged in Syria. There is the physical fighting going on between the rebels and government troops but there is also a media war going on in which the results of the physical battles are being hidden or changed to misrepresent facts. One young activist, Yahya Abdulrahman, a physics student at Aleppo University claimed, “The regime is fighting the people in two ways. One is with the army. The other is with the media. There are parts of the Free Syrian Army that are fighting the regime. But there are other parts fighting the regime’s hackers.””

Smart phones have been key in the Syrian uprising – just like in the Arab Spring revolutions – because, according to the Christian Science Monitor, it is a way for the people to undermine the state media (which is controlled by Assad) and get supporters within Syria and in the rest of the world. So far the Syrian government has banned access to YouTube and Facebook, but several of the youth have found ways around these government firewalls.

Having smart phones and access to computers and internet allow the rebels to communicate with friends and family as well as talk to soldiers who want to defect to the rebel army.

Many Syrian rebels have risked their lives while fighting the media war. According to the Guardian hundreds of video activists have joined the revolution through videography; most are male, young, and technologically capable individuals. Abdulrahman, one of these activists, admits that filming is just as dangerous as fighting with a gun: “If the army sees anyone with a camera they try and kill him first.”

However, the video aspect of the revolution is just as important as the actual physical fighting. Assad controls Syria’s television stations which claim that the Free Syrian Army (the rebels) is a group of “terrorists” and “al-Qaida” while also broadcasting pro-regime propaganda. Abu Mhio, a rebel media activist claims, “When we will be free, [Syrian TV] will be dead.”

If Assad controls all of the media in the country he can prevent the successes of the rebels from being reported which lowers their support and prevents more people from getting involved. In order to ensure that the world and the Syrian people actually know what is going on in Syria they must record it for themselves, even if it is emotionally tolling and life-threatening.

Abdulrahman was arrested once for video-recording a protest on his campus. After being beaten and made to sign a piece of paper claiming he was an informant, he was released and continued filming for the rebels. He has also filmed the dead in the streets to show the toll of the fighting. “I filmed one of the children killed last week. We hadn’t eaten all day because of Ramadan. But afterwards I couldn’t touch any food.”

In previous years rebels have not had such technological access to aid them in their cause. Hafez al-Assad, the current ruler’s father, ruled Syria from 1970 and was responsible for destroying the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people. One rebel fighter explained to the Christian Science Monitor, “His father destroyed Hama in a few days, but there was no TV there and no internet to show the world. But today we have the internet, we photograph and film and have Al Jazeera, so people know. They can see what is happening.”

Few journalists have been allowed within Syria in the recent months of fighting, but those that have, have received threats. One Guardian journalist received a death threat via a tweet from a member of the regime stating, “I pray every night that you die.”

Those journalists that are allowed in the country are also not provided a lot of access. Another journalist, Alex Thomson, tweeted “Syrian government is losing the PR war” when they refused to let him interview or record the Syrian military.

Ultimately, winning the media war will be just as important as winning the physical war for both sides. The rebels have succeeded in many ways but they must take Aleppo in order to really start making changes. According to Burhan Ghalioun, a member of the Syrian National Council currently in Paris, if the rebels take Aleppo “there will be nothing more that will stand in the way of the Free Syrain Army. Hama, Homs, to the outskirts of Damascus have in large part been liberated.”

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If until recently, the problematic situation in Syria was thought to be a temporary instability, then today, it can be said that there is a possibility of civil war in the Arab country. The protests against the president, Bashar al-Assad, and his regime grew into a continued and strenuous struggle that evoked the public opinion. How long this will last is unknown.

It is too late for the Syrians to peacefully extinguish the bloody conflagration. The victims of the uprising are increasing all the time, and by now, they exceed 7,600 people.  This includes both civilians and military men. Whether Syria will have the success of Egypt is one of the most asked questions, concerning society all around the world, because the national issue that started almost a year ago, has gradually turned into a universal one.

The correspondent for London’s ‘The Sunday Times’, Marie Colvin, and the French photographer, Remi Ochlic, were cruelly killed in the city of Homs during a siege. Until now, people have not been thinking about the jeopardy and the consequences of this uprising, but the tragic death of the two journalists in Syria proved that the situation in the Arab world is going off the rails.

On February 24, in Tunisia, a meeting was held by the “Friends of Syria”. During the meeting, around 60 countries insisted on stopping the outrage in troubled Syria. The world leaders unanimously decided that more serious measures against the Assad’s regime need to be taken. They are considering issuing an ultimatum to the Assad government. Their main goal is to send aid in order to help the civilians of the revolutionary country.

Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, appealed to all nations to put bans on the import of oil from Syrians as well as on traveling to and from the Arab country. According to Clinton, it is the high cost that the Syrian officials have to pay for not taking into account the opinion of the international community. She also added that the U.S. will allot $10 million in aid to the Syrian citizens.

Only the leaders of China and Russia still support the Syrian president. They were against the UN resolutions of ending the Assad’s regime, stating that the these declarations will cause more violence in the Arab country. Some diplomats connected the actions of China and Russia to their previous union during the Cold War, but one is sure, with their attitude towards the UN resolutions and the current affairs in Western Asia, they incurred the sharp tongue of the U.S. Secretary of State.

Hilary Clinton described their veto regarding the resolutions as “despicable”. “It is just despicable, and I ask, ‘Whose side are they on?’ They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people,” she said during the meeting in Tunisia.When the Arab Spring will come is still not apparent, but it is an incontrovertible fact that the uprising has transformed into a universal issue that has strained relations between world leaders.

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People of the Arab world have started to envisage a society that is not designed to suppress the voice of the people.

The importance of democracy has really dawned on the people of Syria, which shows that they have picked up something which already set ablaze many Arab states this year. The wave of disturbances between state and citizens that rocketed in Tunisia and Egypt arrived in Syria, leading to the death of hundreds of people.

This crisis at the outset is much deeper in meaning. It represents how the state has ignored the will of its citizens and deceived its people under President Bashar-Al Assad, who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorships from his father Hafez-Al-Assad.

Economic stagnation and ancient autocrats are just a few of the grievances that are responsible for the upheaval currently threatening to sweep away the ruling regime. Decades of repression and in some instances economic sluggishness has resulted in viole”nt disruption of political, social and economic life in the general Middle East.

What is needed is a series of political and economic reforms that would foster economic growth. Furthermore, it calls for recognition and granting of basic rights to people to protest and bring about change.

Political liberty in terms of rule of law, more education, a free press and liberation of women is required for every state to lead a peaceful life. Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics on Economic development, said:

“Development has to more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and freedoms we enjoy.”

People were shouting houriye, houriye (freedom, freedom), and it represents the fact that people realized that their political system is not really reflecting their views.

The relationship between the state and its people had been devastated. According to Economics, a newspaper, “the media which focused on the apparent aspect of the crises (filmed or to produce reports describing the events in the street) have not paid attention to socio-conomic, demographic or political aspects of Syrian society”.

The Syrian society disregarded the existence of more than one political party to oppose the Baath Party until recently. But recent violent protest clearly reveals frustration and state of unease for the people led under pressure to bring in new law that now permits the creation of new political parties along-side the ruling Baath Party.

The key demand of the protest is the liberation of the political system and freedom to form political parties that had been restrained by article 8 of the Syrian constitution so far.

Existence of single political party shows a political monopoly in the country, in economic theory birth or existence of monopoly is regretted or hindered by law similarly in politics it is protest for a change that eventually leads to more just society.

Now the attitude of the Syrian government has been softened since the cabinet approved the multi party bill. Other political party can now participate in elections. Normalcy and prosperity should not be unreachable in the future.

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