Who is involved?
There are two main parties in the war with groups that have broken off from the main parties. There are also many secondary parties backing either of the main parties. The president of Syria, Bashar al-assad, is against having a democracy in Syria and suppressed pro-democracy activists. The opposing party are the rebels, they started as pro-democracy activists protesting the government, but after violent methods of controlling the protests were taken they turned against the government creating their own rebellion to fight Assad until he steps down.
After Assad used chemical weapons against civilians leaving many dead, the U.S. decides to take side with the Rebels and train them to fight against Assad. The Kurds secede and begin to fight against Assad after the rebels do. ISIS is a group of Jihadists that broke off from the rebels and begin to fight against the Rebels and the Kurds.
History
In 2001, Bashar Al-Assad came into power as his father passed away. With a seemingly new start pro-democracy activists pushed for their words to be heard by the new president, but their efforts failed.
In 2011 the activists began protesting to reform the government, on March 15th the protests became violent when the police lost control of the situation and had to use violence to gain control again.
On March 29th, one of the members of the cabinet stepped down to try to calm the turmoil between the rebels and the government, but this solved nothing. On the 21st of April Assad declared the country in a state of emergency which it has stayed for over 5 years. On the 30th the first shots were taken by Assad's army. They fired on a mosque where demonstrators gathered. 6 activists were left dead. On July 31, Assad's army attacked a demonstration in Hama Killing over 100 activists.
In September a report by the UN confirmed that the Syrian army used chemical weapons against rebels and because the war is taking place in the middle of many civilians daily lives it killed many civilians along with activists in the war
At the end of November, 2011, the UN declared the fighting a civil war as over four thousand people had been killed.
IN 2014 part of the rebels broke off to make their own group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS), mostly made up of Jihadist extremists that Assad released to fight against him so that outside countries would have a harder time supporting the rebels. This group became very barbaric and became a threat to anyone who involved themselves with them. Many of them trained because the U.S. trained rebels to fight against Assad but this was before ISIS was an issue.
Why is this war happening?
Many people in Syria are unhappy with the government form and decide to start protesting against the current government and they want a democracy. The President denies the request to reform the government and the protests get more intense and the Syrian army has to handle them with violence causing the protesters to rebel and fight back hence the name, Rebels.
The U.S. became involved in the war when Assad began taking extreme actions to deal with rebels while also killing many of innocent civilians with chemical weapons. Once this happened the U.S. began to train rebels and even threatened to use missle strikes on Assad's regime
Effects outside of Syria
With the fighting happening in most peoples everyday lives, the risks from just living in Syria are very high. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to nearby countries like Turkey for example has the largest amount of refugees flowing into their country. This flow could continue to happen as long as the war does, but there is no end in sight for either.
Along with the refugee crisis the fighting has spread to other countries like Israel which has previously been in a war with Syria. With the fighting spreading Israel is fearing the birth of another war with Syria, but with Russia now backing Syria there could be more cons to come from fighting than there would be pros because of the risk of having such a powerful country against them.
No End in Sight
With powerful countries backing smaller groups and smaller countries there could be a bigger war emerging from this civil war. Also with so many groups that are fighting more than one group and even some groups not really sure who they are for or against followed by the larger powers funding them and training them there could be no end anytime soon.