There are no simple ways of explaining the situation in Syria. With countless foreign forces involved in this conflict, this regional chaos has been dubbed by New York Times as “a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts” - the Civil War and the War against Terrorism. There is currently a consensus amongst the international community to cut off the financial flow of ISIL and, in turn, contain and control its threat against international peace and security. However, such efforts have been challenged by the Civil War between the Alawite–dominated government forces and the Sunni-majority opposition forces, both of which has been backed by various regional and international actors, as firearms, military equipments, and fiscal support plunge into the Greater Syrian Region and intensified the multi-sided proxy war. Lines are blurred between friend and foe, as countries and non-state actors create unlikely alliances to fend off the expansion of ISIL whilst fighting against one another.

      In this year’s Crisis Committee, delegates will be discussing the issue of the Syrian Civil War and its Spillovers. Not only will we expect delegates to seek a political solution to the religious segregation, to attempt to find a sustainable method of governing this multi-ethnical region, and to consider the possibility of transnational cooperation on combating terrorism; we will also guide delegates to discuss issues that can be partly attributed to the Syrian unsettlement but not widely discussed by the international community, such as the Kurds conflict with the Turkish government, the spillover warfare in Lebanon, Egypt, and Yemen, and the potential creation of a dispute settlement mechanism in this war-torn region.