War in Syria- What Does This Mean For Italy? [BLOG POST 4]

By Jacob Braun

Italian Customs boat enters port in southern Italy with Syrian Refugees, UNHCR/F.Noy, Copyright

Spurred on by widespread unrest within the Arab world caused by the 2011 Arab Spring protests, the Syrian Arab Republic was flung into a brutal civil war in early March of the same year. Until the breakout of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Syrian Civil War would be the source of the largest refugee crisis in human history since the Second World War. With large amounts of majority Arabic, Muslim immigrants crossing the Mediterranean into Italy and Greece, a chain of events would unfold leading to an explosion in populist rhetoric within the EU.

A DECADE OF CRISIS

On entering the new millennium, the geopolitical landscape of the Mediterranean would change dramatically. Dictatorial regimes like Ben Ali’s in Tunisia and Qaddafi’s in Libya would be overthrown with the Arab Spring— with Al Assad’s regime seemingly…