Five years. That has been the time since the ‘‘Arab Spring'' revolution was stopped in its tracks in Syria, locking civilians in a long, brutal ‘‘winter of discontent''.
It has been five years of unimaginable torment, terror and total destruction.
Five years of escalating horror stories, which seem only to illustrate the myriad ways in which humans can kill, maim or debase each other: through conventional and chemical warfare, suicide bombings, beheadings, torture, sexual slavery, ethnic cleansing.
Five years of watching Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime face off against various rebel groups.
Five years watching the conflict become a proxy war between the West and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Five years of watching the United Nations and the Arab League try and fail to reach peace deals.
Five years of hand-wringing, outrage, tough words (remember United States President Barack Obama's chemical weapons ‘‘red line''?), wise words, deaf ears, division, emergency meetings, political impotence, political posturing and military ‘‘solutions''.
Five years of watching the political vacuum and fractured Syrian opposition spawn a new world disorder: the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Five years of an ever-increasing toll of dead, wounded and displaced: the first two now numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the latter in the millions.
Five years of watching the tide of refugees fleeing the death and destruction overwhelm refugee camps in nearby Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, litter beaches in Turkey and Greece with bodies, and begin flooding into Europe in what is now being described as the worst refugee crisis since World War 2.
Five years of seeing a culture and civilisation reduced to rubble.
Five years in which journalists have also been killed and injured while reporting on the conflict.
And five years of false hope.
A ‘‘speedy collapse of the regime'' was envisaged by Syrian rebel commander Abdullah al-Shami in July 2012 - 16 months into the uprising, when a bomb attack killed four of President Assad's key military advisers.
A recent ‘‘cessation of hostilities'' has allowed much-needed aid to get to some civilians, but it has already been violated and remains on shaky ground. And a recent leaked list of the names of more than 20,000 jihadis seems too good to be true and international experts are divided over whether it is the ultimate hoax or the ultimate weapon in the fight against the terror group which has cut a swathe through Iraq and Syria.
While the world is generally a ‘‘safer'' place after the Cold War, it sometimes feels as though we never received the ‘‘the war to end all wars'' memo, that the list of humanity's failings increases by the decade, that regional conflicts continue on an epic scale, and Syria is sadly one of the latest in a long line.
The crisis has divided the Arab states. It is dividing Europe. While some have welcomed refugees fleeing the civil war (and the problems a mass influx brings), others are closing their borders.
Far away, at the bottom of the world, in our privileged position, five years after the bloodshed began, and after much pressure and debate about our global responsibilities, New Zealand has welcomed the first group of Syrian refugees under our increased (but still small) refugee quota.
Some of those people will soon make their way south to Dunedin where they will (hopefully) find a safe and welcoming haven, and a chance to process the trauma they have experienced and start rebuilding their lives.
But five years into the Syrian conflict, the fact that so much pain should continue to be endured by so many (while so few provide meaningful solutions), is surely a source of global shame.
