Saturday, July 30, 2016

"the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God" - How to Address the Tragedies of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Pacific Ocean Coast, West of Tokyo


How to Address the Tragedies of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan


The tragedies of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan as well as Libya and Gaza must be solved in a peaceful manner.

But what is the real status of the tragedies?
The Syrian Civil Waris an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict with international interventions[90] taking place in Syria. The unrest grew out of the 2011 Arab Spring protests, and escalated to armed conflict after President Bashar al-Assad's government violently repressed protests calling for his removal.[91] The war is being fought by the Syrian Government, a loose alliance of Syrian Arab rebel groups, the Syrian Democratic Forces, Salafi jihadist groups (including al-Nusra Front) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). All sides receive substantial support from foreign actors, leading many to label the conflict a proxy war waged by the regional and world major powers.
On 20 August 2014, a new U.N. study concluded that at least 191,369 people have died in the Syrian conflict.[778] The UN thereafter stopped collecting statistics, but a study by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research released in February 2016 estimated the death toll at 470,000, with 1.9m wounded (reaching a total of 11.5% of the entire population wounded or killed).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war

Iraq witnessed a sharp increase in civilian deaths following the fall of large swaths of territory to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014. Despite a string of recent battlefield losses for IS, civilians in Iraq continue to die at a “staggering” rate, according to a new United Nations report.

At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between Jan. 1, 2014, and Oct. 31, 2015, according to the U.N. report released Tuesday. More than 10,000 of them died between May and October last year.

“Despite their steady losses to pro-government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering,” said U.N. envoy Jan Kubis, using an alternate acronym for the extremist group.

The numbers are nowhere near the death tolls of Iraq’s bloody civil war. In 2006 alone, more than 34,000 civilians were killed, according to U.N. data. The following year, the Iraqi government refused to provide the U.N. with death statistics, stating that it wanted to keep from painting a negative image of the country. But civilian casualties since the rise of IS in Iraq are considerably higher than in the preceding years of relative stability. In 2011, the number of civilian deaths due to violence was at its lowest since the civil war, with fewer than 2,800 killed.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2016/jan/19/u-n-report-18802-iraqi-civilians-killed-in-22-months/

During the war in Afghanistan (2001–14), over 26,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence have been documented;[1] 29,900 civilians have been wounded.[1] Over 91,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are recorded to have been killed in the conflict, and the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may include an additional 360,000 people.[1] These numbers do not include those who have died in Pakistan.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%9314)
So, it looks like a million people were killed in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the wake of the War on Terror and the Arab Spring protests that were influenced by the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq in 2003.


These areas are deeply involved in the human history.  First, Abraham, the original ancestor, of Hebrews and Arabs was born in currently Iraq to move to currently Palestine.  Secondly, Alexander the Great marched through Syria and Iraq to as far as Afghanistan.  And, finally these regions were colonized by Western powers such as Britain, France, and Russia.

It tells these regions are the core of the human history while they are exposed to European aggressive power.  So, to address the tragedies in these regions, we have to respect the history and check the nature of the European Civilization.

Or conversely, because the mankind do not fully respect the human history and the origin of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and European powers do not feel obligation to help Muslims in these regions to compensate their past colonial occupation, the tragedies in these region continue.

It is symbolic that AlQaeda and the Taliban once destroyed old Buddhism relics in Afghanistan and ISIS has been destroying historical monuments in Syria and Iraq.  Indeed, the key to understanding these tragedies is the lack of parties concerned in respect for history.

And it is also symbolic that more than one million Islamic refugees migrated into Europe in 2015, while there were already 13 million Muslim immigrants in the EU as of 2010.

The world community should face these tragedies based on the historic understanding while the European community should realize their responsibility and take the initiative in addressing the tragedies.


chart showing number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean by month from 2014 to February 2016
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911




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Luk 7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
Luk 7:29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.
Luk 7:30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.