Syria's tragic saga a long way from being over

Just one year ago Syria's brutal and seemingly eternal Assad family dictatorship was toppled.

- John J Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defence issues. He is the author of 'Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China'.

The long-entrenched Russianbacked regime fell in a matter of ten days to a series of lightning offensives by the Islamic Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement based in and backed by Turkey. The tyrant was toppled in Damascus, the Assads fled to Moscow, and suffering Syria fell into the shadow of a forgotten conflict.

Nearly 15 years of brutal civil war and agonising humanitarian conflict became synonymous with Syria. The chaos kept Syria in the headlines; now that the fighting has ended and a new regime has come to power in Damascus, the country is largely being overlooked as part of the global conflict fatigue.

That's a mistake, as the tragedy of 14 years of sectarian civil war and nearly a half-century of Mr Assad's socialist, albeit secular, regime had turned the country of 24 million people into a humanitarian disaster now waiting to be rebuilt and socially reborn.

Here's what they still confront despite the guns having mostly fallen silent. More than half the population, or 16.5 million people, are in need of assistance according to the UN's OCHA humanitarian agency. Top donors to the relief efforts are the European Commission with US$151 million (4.8 billion baht), the US with $116 million and Germany with $70 million.