The UN Refugee Agency has offered a new assessment of the ever growing refugee problem in Syria’s Civil War, saying now that roughly half of the entire population of Syria has been displaced by the conflict.
Three million Syrians are refugees abroad, mostly in places like Turkey and Lebanon, while another 6.5 million have been displaced internally, mostly either Sunnis fleeing north into rebel territory or Shi’ites fleeing toward Damascus and the Assad government’s holdings.
It would be a mistake to attribute all of this to the ISIS gains, however, as the majority of the displaced were also displaced a year ago, before ISIS really started making big territorial advances. The situation has continued to grow worse nationwide.
In the long run, many of the displaced will likely never return home, with wholesale population displacement leading to sectarian homogeneity in different regions of the rapidly disintegrating country.
