If the Syrian War happened to us

If the Syrian war happened to the United States, 170 million Americans would be refugees.

59 million of us would have fled our borders, maybe seeking solace in Mexico, or onwards to South America by smuggling in cars, by boat, by foot. Washington D.C. would be a war zone, New York City and Los Angeles would both be in shambles, and scattered throughout small-town America would be a brutal militant group imposing a dystopic pseudo-government on citizens and using American resources to gain strength.

This is not a logical hypothetical, because it's impossible (and trivializing) to imagine current events of one country happening in a vastly different one. But it's hard to come to terms with just how much devastation Syria has endured, so this is simply an exercise of relation -- I'm scaling Syria's proportion of damage to our own population.

How many people would have died?

Since the initial string of peaceful protests back in 2011, 250,000 Syrians have been killed, of which 115,000 were civilians and 12,000 were kids. Syria has a population of 22.85 million population, while America has a population of 318.9 million.

What would happen to our cities?

Imagine in 2020, if most of America's major cities were in shambles. It's a jarring notion that places where millions of people live today could crumble into ruins in just five years.

Since the outbreak of the war, most urban centers in Syria have become war zones, forcing half of the nation's population out of their homes, and resulting in thousands of civilian casualties of those unwilling or unable to flee in time.

As of summer 2014, there were more than 30,000 destroyed or damaged buildings in Aleppo, Ar Raqqa, Daraa, Deir Ez Zor, Hama, and Homs.

Where would ISIS be?

When it began in 2011, the Syrian war was very much a civil conflict. Syrians, outraged by their brutal government and inspired by other Arab uprisings occurring around the area, began massive peaceful protests in city centers. The protests quickly spread throughout the country, and the government increasingly responded with lethal measures against its citizens. and slowly, civilian rebel groups formed to fight the government. As the war dragged on, intentions became hazier, as extremist rebels fled to Syria from bordering countries, some (including what's now known as ISIS) with differing agendas.

Including its territory in Iraq, In Syria and Iraq combined, there are an estimated 2.8 million to 5.3 million people living under ISIS rule. A fraction of those people are there by choice, but for the most part, they are civilians whose towns and villages have been seized and and overrun in the middle of war. Today, ISIS occupies about 30% of Syrian land, most of which is rural, and it receives about a billion dollars a year in tax revenue from civilians subject to its rule.

If the Syrian War happened in the United States, that would equate to ISIS establishing control in the central U.S., leading up into Canada.

Where would we go?

The Syrian war no longer belongs to Syrians, and if it happened here, it wouldn't belong to us either. The war began to protect Syrians, but was overridden by the agenda of outsiders -- radicalized, extremist, and violent outsiders.

Over half of Syria's population has been dislocated, meaning that there are at least 12 million people in the world who need to re-establish their lives somewhere else. The massive migration out of Syria has strained neighboring countries, most notably Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Families escape together by foot, and by dangerous migrant boat crossings, aspiring to obtain refugee status in Europe. Half of the refugees are children, many of whom have had inconsistent education over the past four years.


Sources:
Cover Photo: UNRWA
Statistics: UNHCR, Amnesty International, UNOSAT