Syria Simulation
On this workshop I learned about the serious problems that Syria is facing right now. The Workshop was a three-hour activity where the organizer provided us with an overview of the Syrian conflict. The workshop had three different round of simulations and depending on the action each table decided to take, the staff decided the probability of this action to occur in real life. If the attack was successful then they determined the consequences such as the number of casualities. For this workshop I was assigned the Assad table. We learned about Assad position and that helped us to represent him and make decisions that he will probably choose to do in real life.
In the first round, the Salafi rebels (ISIS) attempted to kill Assad because they did not believe in the regime and they wanted to recreate the time of the prophet Mohamed. We (Assad) pointed out that the attack was a violation of Syria’s sovereignty and we blamed the United States sanctions for creating and humanitarian crisis.
In the second round Turkey accepted Syrian refugees and we started a social media campaign, so our population does not turn on us. We said in the campaign that the sanctions were hurting civilians more than helping them. During this round we also make strategic alliances with Iran, They provide us with financial and military aid.

In the third round, the free Syrian army broke their alliances with the Islamist and they started to support the western powers. The Salafi rebels attempted to procure weapons of mass destruction. In response, we used chemicals weapons on our on population
After concluding round 3, we were unable to achieve piece. The Syrian population began fleeing the country because the lack of security. The West increased it’s aid to the Free Syrian Army. Iran backed us by providing military support and the United Nations passed a resolution to support UN peacekeepers in Syria as long as the efforts was not lead by the United States. In my opinion we were unable to achieve the “win” conditions because the war is still going and peace was not achieve. Also, Syrian people do not want to stay there because the lack of security. We could not stable Syrian state that resulted in an end to the outflow of refugees and the return of at least some who had already left Syria