On September 23, the international coalition against ISIS entered its sixth year. Since the outset, it has been involved in supporting specific armed factions to expand its influence and to achieve its objectives. Now after five years of its military campaign against Daesh, the international coalition controls about 70 percent of the oil and gas reserves in Syria. But as a result of civil war and international intervention in Syria, at least 560,000 people have been killed, 6.2 million have been internally displaced, and 5.6 million have forced to flee the devastated country. Syrian women are increasingly becoming victims of rapes and forced and temporary serial marriages throughout the country. No less than 223,000 civilians including 28,486 children and 27,464 women were killed since the start of the Syrian crisis in March 2011. Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias were responsible for about 90 percent of the civilian death toll in Syria. Syrian Crisis Background Stirred by Arab Spring in March 2011, thousands of Syrian people carried peaceful demonstrations across the country to demand personal freedoms and democratic reforms, which President Bashar al-Assad refused to offer. The peaceful rallies and marches quickly turned blood-stained and flared up into anti-regime protests after the ruthless Syrian regime forces conducted a crackdown and opened fire on the protestors, killing a few and detaining many. The uprising further brewed after the Syrian military arrested and tortured a group of teenagers for writing graffiti in support of the Arab Spring and brutally killed a 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khateeb. In July 2011, defectors from the military formed an armed alliance-Free Syrian Army-to fight Assad’s brutalities and to topple his government-and the civil war eventually broke throughout the country. Assad-led Alawis Rule Syria Syria is divided into a complex religious and ethnic paradigm. Originally, the disturbances were non-sectarian but the prevalence of armed conflict gravely mined the religious dissent in the Arab Republic. About 70 percent of the Syrian population is Sunni; however, the country is ruled by 11 percent Alawites or Alawis-branded as an upshot of the Shia sect-though they distance themselves from this Shia sect. Assad-an Alwai-gained power in July 2000, securing 99.7 percent vote in a controversial and uncontested presidential 2000 elections. Assad is the son of Hafiz al-Assad who reigned over Syria for 30 years. In addition to being the Syrian president, Assad is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian armed forces and the General Secretary of the ruling Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. Foreign Intervention A number of regional and global players are involved in Syria to secure their ‘specific’ interests, but foreign interventions have critically fuelled the Syrian crisis. Whatever the reasons are behind the foreign interventions in Syria, the cost is paid and paid heavily by the civilians of Syria.Assad’s government is strongly backed by Shia-majority countries and Shiite armed organisations, such as Iran, Iraq, and Lebanese Hezbollah, while the Sunni-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar favour the revolts. In its March 2019 annual report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 223,161 civilians had been killed in Syria since the start of the revolution on March 15, 2011 In September 2015, the Russian military invaded the Levant to support Assad’s regime in guise of bombing terrorist bases in Syria. The geopolitical gurus believed it was a Russian attempt to offload western pressure and bargain sanctions. But Moscow’s stalwart support for Assad was additionally in wake of securing its strategic asset in Syrian-the Tartus port. In 1971, Hafiz al-Assad handed over the port to Russia in return of providing advanced weapons to Syria. Through the Tartus port, Moscow had a craving to ramp up its influence in region. Although the United States has repetitively reprimanded Assad’s serious human rights violations in Syria, it has been disinclined to be directly involved into the crisis except for firing 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian air base in April 2017 over the suspected use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime forces. Civilian Death Toll For more than eight years, Syrian citizens have suffered from a vast and terrible range of violations of staggering magnitude, which have reached the level of crimes against humanity. Since March 2011, the Syrian people have been exposed to a horrific pattern of violations, including fatal torture, rape of men and women, and death by barrel bomb, Scud missiles and chemical weapons. In its March 2019 annual report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 223,161 civilians had been killed in Syria since the start of the revolution on March 15, 2011. The death toll included as many as 28,486 children and 27,464 women. Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias were responsible for about 90 percent of the total civilian death toll or 198,409 killings in Syria. In addition, at least 143,176 individuals were still detained or forcibly disappeared (largely by Syrian regime forces) at the hands of the main parties to the conflict in Syria till March 2019. In December 2018, the observatory group said that at least 560,000 people were killed including civilians, Syrian regime forces and their supporting militias, and opposition factions. The death toll included104,000 people tortured to death in the regime’s jails. In the lowest death toll during the 102-month war, 272 people were killed in September. A total of 134 civilians including 14 children and 10 women lost their lives. The 59-month airstrikes by Assad’s regime have so far killed 13,645 civilians including 3,150 children, while more than 19,000 people including about 8,300 civilians were killed by Russian warplanes since they began their military operation in Syria at the end of September 2015. Human Displacements Despite reduction in violence in many parts of the country over the past year, an estimated 11.7 million people in Syria require multi-sectorial humanitarian assistance. According to the UN Humanitarian Needs Overview 2019, there were still 6.2 million internally displaced persons in the conflict-ridden country. As of October 3, 2019, United Nations Commissioner for Refugees had registered more than 5.6 million Syrians who had fled their homes to seek asylum in the neighbouring countries. Turkey, with 65.1 percent or over 3.6 million people, was the largest host country for Syrian refugees. Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt were the other leading host countries. Children are the prime victims of Syrian war Unicef says that children are paying the heaviest price of the Syrian crisis. After eight years of conflict, violence, displacement, severed family ties, and lack of access to vital services has impacted every Syrian child. An estimated of 2.6 million children remain displaced inside Syria, while some 2.5 million children are living as refugees in adjacent countries. 2018 was the deadliest single year for children since the start of the war. Grave violations of children’s rights-recruitment, abductions, killing, and maiming-continue unabated. Unexploded ordnance is a lethal threat to the millions of Syrian children, as about five million children still need humanitarian assistance, including nearly half a million in hard-to-reach areas. Sexual Exploitation Women in Syria are exposed to greater risks of sexual exploitation and sexual harassments as the Syrian civil war prolongs. Syrian women are increasingly becoming victims of rapes and forced and temporary serial marriages throughout the country. UN Gender-based Violence Area of Responsibility Whole of Syria 2019 reconfirmed that GBV, particularly sexual violence and sexual harassment, domestic violence, family violence against girls and women, and early-enforced marriages, continues to pervade the lives of girls and women, especially adolescent girls. The major types of sexual violence were rape, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, requests in return for aid, child marriage, forced marriage, and serial temporary marriage. Population from all the Syrian districts of Aleppo, Al Hasakeh, Ar-Raqqa, As-Sweida, Damascus, Deir-ez-Zor, Hama, Homs, Idleb, Lattakia, Rural Damascus, and Tartous have been affected by various types of violence. The writer works in a private organization as a market and business analyst and writes on geopolitical issues and regional conflicts