Syria’s internal conflict has claimed more than 400,000 lives and created millions more refugees, a Middle Tennessee State University professor said here last week.  The horrors of that war could metastasize in the American homeland, he warned.
Dr. Saleh Sbenaty, professor of computer engineering technology, told The Rotary Club of McMinnville the destruction and despair caused by Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad has forced the country’s people to choose between two dreadful options—join forces with the government or embrace terrorists groups like the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS). 
Sbenaty grew up in a solid, middle-class family in a comfortable and richly historic sector of Damascus. But in six years of artillery shelling and aerial bombing, his childhood neighborhood is no longer recognizable, having been reduced to rubble.
“I was enjoying a really good life but I didn’t have my freedom,” the Rotary speaker said.
Sbenaty chose to enroll in the graduate program at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville where he earned master’s and PhD degrees.
After receiving his doctorate, he began his 24-year career teaching engineering students at MTSU. Sbenaty also serves as a faculty advisor to the university Muslim Student Association and is a trustee of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
Since 2001 when street protests confronted Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, the nation’s population has been cut in half, down to 12 million people, he noted. Many of the losses resulted from indiscriminate artillery fire and bombing by the government and its Russian and Iranian allies. 
But by far the greatest part was the exodus of men, women and children, many fleeing the violence into neighboring Lebanon and Jordan, with others taking the extremely arduous and hazardous refugee routes into Europe. And many of those represented the most educated, talented and creative citizens — further depressing the outlook for post-war recovery.
Street protests in Damascus and other major Syrian cities started out peacefully as the Arab Spring inspired hope for constructive change in the Middle East and Northern Africa. But Al-Assad turned his army against the demonstrators, who were armed only with their words. Soldiers opened machine gun fire on the demonstrators, killing hundreds of students, shopkeepers, pensioners and small children, Sbenaty said.
“Innocent people were targeted and machine-gunned every day over nine months,” he said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin sent heavy arms, fighter planes and bombers into Syria under the pretext of combating ISIS and other terror groups.  But the real purpose for the intervention, the speaker explained, was to prop up a dictatorship hated by its people and threatened with collapse because of it destructive political and economic policies.
Sbenaty continues the discussion from his Rotary program when he appears on WCPI’s “Focus” this week. His in-depth and highly personal account of the Syrian catastrophe airs on WCPI 91.3 FM this Wednesday at 5 a.m.; Thursday at 1 p.m.; and Friday at 1 a.m.