Every day there's more news coming out of Syria that involves multiple groups playing a role in the conflict. And as the situation in the country gets increasingly nuanced and complicated, more people are trying to put the pieces together with explanatory maps.
While often simplified to a war between the regime and rebel forces, we know "rebels" include countless players — Kurdish forces, Nusra Front, Free Syrian Army ... the list goes on. Even Daesh (ISIS) is sometimes included in the "rebel" genre, though anyone following the news would place the militants in a separate category altogether since they don't play nice with anyone.
It's easy to get overwhelmed with the tangled web of fighters, but some people have set out to make sense of it all. These maps that have been circulating on social media are pretty helpful in understanding whether these groups have made grounds, and how worried we should be about Daesh establishing a "caliphate."
This first map gives a good overview of what Syria looks like now:
This one shows how territories have changed in a year. Daesh (grey) made some headway, while the Syrian regime (red) saw significant losses. Green is rebel forces, yellow Kurdish forces, and blue the IDF.
But before you get too discouraged about the bleak Daesh news, this map reminds us that not all territories are created equal. When looking at a map without the desert, we're back to square one in terms of understanding the changes in the past four years of conflict — group territories are looking pretty evenly divided.
And for our final map, this one's just for laughs.
