So there’s a shortage in food aid to Syrian refugees scattered around the Middle East region, and UN has made an unusual appeal for the world to help out. If aid doesn’t reach thousands of people risk starving to death during the cold winter months in under equipped refugee camps. The horrifying threat of ISIS and the other over 1.000 militia groups that are terrorizing the country have received international condemnation, internet campaigns against ISIS and a new awareness about the Syrian civil war that is now on it’s 4th year. Many seem terrified about the terrorists in Syria and the damage they have brought to the already devastated country that’s slowly falling into pieces. But what the world seems not to remember is that Syria for decades was plagued by a dictatorship where people disappeared into the intelligence service Mukhabarat’s secret prisons for having their own opinions, and young women gang raped and dumped in the sea by the ruling elite’s young men, safe in the awareness that they’re affiliation with the Assad regime would protect them from any consequences. Long before the civil war, human rights activists in Syria tried to call for attention on the ongoing crimes against humanity, unheard. Not until the bearded young men with rifles and a twisted version of Islam showed up on Youtube, the world started to react. And now it’s most likely too late. Photo credit: cskc.daleel-madani.org