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Syria is this century’s great humanitarian disaster. Borne on the winds of change in 2011, the Syrian uprising long since turned chaotic and bloody. More than 220,000 Syrians have been killed since 2011. Countless hundreds of thousands more have been maimed and wounded.

The country is divided many ways and is an economic basket case. Almost half its population have been displaced, nearly four million to outside the country. It is the biggest refugee crisis the world has witnessed.

And throughout it all, the international community has stood by. Diplomatic efforts have come to nought. They’ve come full circle. Where once the talk was of a post-Bashar al-Assad future, now the talk is almost completely focused on combating the Islamic State group (IS, formerly Isis), whose brutal reign over vast swathes of Syria and Iraq now dominates the narrative.

On this bleak picture, al-Araby al-Jadeed has tried to shed some light with its special coverage of the fourth anniversary of the revolution’s outbreak. We’ve compiled a timeline of major events in the past four years.

A UNHCR map shows the dispersement of Syrian refugees in December 2014. The total now tops 3.8 million

We’ve visited refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, and heard the stories of individuals now languishing in camps in Lebanon.

We've asked the big questions: Who benefits from the Islamic State group, how did it get to this (Hamid Dabashi), where are we now (Vijay Prashad) and what does it mean for the revolutionary movement in the region (Joseph Daher).

What is left of Syria, asks Adli Smeisem. And there is also a defiant call to resistance from Burhan Ghalioun. Whatever happens, he writes, Syrians will never give up their rights.

We asked Syrian children to express themselves in drawings. We filmed some of their responses. We’ve documented the desperate situation in the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp.

We’ve looked at the numbers and the evidence. We've gauged the relative strengths of the many fighting forces and spoken to former members of the IS group. Pause for a moment to consider that where, in 2010, the average Syrian life expectancy was over 77 years, it is now only 55.

An estimated 220,000 have been killed. Click here for larger image

Pause to consider a country that uninhibited fighting has left dark – both in terms of the coverage of the conflict and in reality.

Over the next week, we will be adding more articles and information on the Syrian revolution, one that was born in great hope when Arab peoples rose up across the region demanding their rights, but which has turned into great calamity over the past four years.