In the past 12 months, crazy things have been happening all over the world. Syria and South Sudan are tearing themselves apart in brutal civil wars, mass protests are taking place around the good ol’ US of A against police brutality and racism, Putin invaded Crimea, Sony was hacked by North Korea and Germany obliterated Brazil in the World Cup. I’ll talk about the formers. Syria is an ancient country in the middle east, with Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, Turkey to the north and Lebanon to the west. Syria, ever since independence in 1946, was tense internally and coup d'etats occurred several times in the nation’s history.

In 2011, protests took place around the country against government corruption and human rights abuses. The government responded by sending in the military who violently attempted to dissolve the protests. This made the nation’s citizens angrier, and eventually it erupted into full scale riots. The Free Syrian Army was formed that July, and began to arm the protesters. The Civil War started, and already it was bloody. Since the war’s start, thousands of people have died and millions were dislocated. The Islamic State, which had just started to make a presence in Iraq, saw the opportunity and took it, putting nearly half of the country under their control as a result.

The second war I want to talk about is the South Sudan Civil War. In 2011, South Sudan voted for independence and separated from Sudan. Yet not even two years after independence a Civil War in a new state was lingering. In late 2013, President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar had a power struggle, and the president declared it to be a coup d’etat. When Machar was tried for treason, his most loyal supporters attacked the capital Juba and riots started. Eventually, the fighting spread from Juba to the entire country, where thousands have died and about a million dislocated.

My point by mentioning the two most recent internal conflicts is to show how easy it is for a country to erupt into war. In 1969 El Salvador declared war on Honduras after tense relationships following disputed pre-World Cup matches, in which 3000 people died. This just proves how easy it is for a country to be at peace one day and go to war the next, ignorance at the say of its people or taking their tensions way too far.