Syria's Implosion Will Bring Down The Whole Region

Islam's gift to the world is perpetual war.

An excerpt from, "ISIS uses Nazi tactics to train youths to become 'more lethal, brutal, better fighters' - report," RT, March 6, 2016:

Islamic State jihadists use children, trained as soldiers, executioners and suicide bombers from an early age, to become “more lethal fighters than themselves,” a major study has warned. 
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The UN-endorsed report, entitled “Children of Islamic State" and compiled through a study of the group’s propaganda as well as reports from trusted sources, will be published in Parliament on Wednesday. 

Of more than 800 Britons living in Islamic State-controlled territory, an estimated 50 are said to be children. Researchers investigated how Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) recruits children and trains them for jihad.

“These children are saved from corruption making them stronger than the current mujahideen [fighters] because they have a superior understanding of Islam from youth and from school curriculum, and are better and more brutal fighters as they are trained in violence from a very young age,” the authors of the study stressed, adding that the terrorist group wants “to prepare a new, stronger, second generation of mujahideen, conditioned and taught to be a future resource for the group.”
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IS teach boys as young as three jihadist ideology, how to handle firearms, beheading techniques and how to be a suicide bomber, a journalist who risked his life to visit a children’s militant camp in Afghanistan told RT in December. “All the children knew all the names of the weapons and they all knew how to use [them]..." filmmaker and journalist, Najibullah Quraishi, said. Afghan children appear to be the latest to be recruited by IS terrorists, who have implemented similar brainwashing programs in Syria and Iraq.

An excerpt from, "Report reveals horrifying cost of conflict to Syria, its neighbours and children" CNW, March 8, 2016:

MISSISSAUGA, ON, March 8, 2016 /CNW/ - US$275 billion, US$689 billion, US$1.3 trillion. These mind-boggling figures, revealed in a new report released today by aid agency World Vision, highlight how far the persistent and horrifying costs for Syria, its neighbours and its children have risen and will likely rise in the future.

The Cost of Conflict for Children, a collaboration between World Vision and Frontier Economics, evaluates the economic losses to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to date and into the future. It estimates that if the conflict continues to 2020, the cost to Syria will be a staggering US$1.3 trillion.

Five long years of the Syrian conflict has left millions of Syrian children out of school, unable to access essential health services and suffering from malnutrition. As numbers of those fleeing violence in Syria rise, needs are outstripping available resources more than ever and families are left facing increasingly desperate choices including entering their children into early marriage and child labour, just to help the family survive.

QUOTES

"The bottom line is peace – it's the only sustainable solution that will put an end to both the human and financial costs of this conflict. Canada has opened its arms to 25,000 refugees and has been a generous humanitarian donor. Now is the time for Canada to invest in the peace process by offering our diplomatic clout to ensure civilians are protected, humanitarian access is unhindered, and a political resolution is found," said Michael Messenger, President, World Vision Canada.

An excerpt from, "Why the Syrian conflict will define the decade" by Peter Apps, Irish Examiner, March 9, 2016:

Many decades have a war that defines them, a conflict that points to much broader truths about the era — and perhaps presages larger things to come.

For the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War, the three-year fight between Fascists (helped by Nazi Germany) and Republicans (armed by the Soviet Union) pointed to the far larger global disaster to come.

For the 1980s, the Soviet battle to control Afghanistan, a bloody mess of occupation and insurgency, helped bring forward the collapse of the Soviet Union and set the stage for 9/11 and modern Islamist militancy.

For the 1990s, you can take your pick of the Balkans, Somalia, Rwanda or Democratic Republic of Congo. For the 2000s, it was Iraq — the ultimate demonstration of the ‘unipolar moment’ and the limits, dangers and sheer short-livedness of America’s status as unchallenged global superpower.

We are, of course, little more than half way through the current decade. Already, however, it looks as though it has to be Syria’s civil war.