I was lucky enough to have visited Syria in 2009. I spent 3 weeks in Damascus. My impressions at the time:
* The pepole were surprisingly westernised
* Most younger people spoke great English
* Alcohol was available, but limited because *most* people didn't drink (instead people socialised in tea halls)
* Cheap oil meant that the taxi to the burger joint cost less than the burger did
* The people were extremely friendly
* I never felt unsafe
* The city was extremely clean
* ...however, the air was polluted
* Bakdash pistachio ice-cream was AMAZINGLY good https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakdash_(ice_cream_parlor)
* The old city was beautiful and packed with history...
* One day we rented a van to see some surrounding areas. The driver was extremely friendly. He showed us around and told us about the history of the places. I still have very fond memories of that desert trip
The signs of the Assad regime were everywhere: posters of Bashar al-Assad were everywhere and armed police on most street corners. Beyond that, it felt very normal (from a westerners perspective) and I never felt like I was in (what the US calls) a "rogue state".
Meta-commentary: This is one of the more fascinating threads I have seen on HN. It seems to parallel many of the problems with political discourse in the world today - maybe it's always been like this, but I'm not old enough to know.
I would break down the comments into several types:
1) conspiracy theorists who believe in some secret cult that is unilaterally organizing everything
2) trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause. They are throwing chaff into the discussion to confuse and disorient and to detract from the real issues.
3) people with experience in these events trying desperately to be heard - these are the people meant to be drowned out by the trolls
4) alarmists - people with relatively little knowledge of the actual goings-on who insist that every minor event is the end of the world (or Syria). I'm not saying that Syria hasn't been decimated, but that it was (and is) a process not an event
5) the rest of everyone who is trying to make heads or tails of things and seems to fall into one of those camps.
So, to one of the brighter communities on the internet (that's you HN) I ask: how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another?
I wish there were more definite sources detailing what the actual conflict is about. People are giving all sorts of accounts online and it seems to be divided into a few camps:
1) western and sunni middle eastern press: it's all Assad's (government's) fault. People want democracy. Specifically this is supposed to be a response to violent repression of pro-democracy protests from March 2011.
Problem: very hard to believe. The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed, and the "protesters" do not seem very pro-democracy at all.
Second problem: the middle eastern press (al Jazeera) is owned by a government that would stand to benefit substantially from the pipeline issue. Even aside from the pipeline, that government is involved in funding the exremists in Syria.
2) shi'a middle eastern press
Coordinated Sunni attack against one of the two last multicultural/tolerant middle eastern Countries (the other one being Iran, and while Israel is multicultural/tolerant Iran doesn't see it that way). It's an attack to massacre the last vestiges of tolerance in the middle east.
Problem: obviously this is state propaganda. That doesn't mean it's not true, of course, but there are military interests at stake by the same people who own these press.
3) Russian press (there were/are hundreds of thousands of Russians from the Soviet union who lived in Syria)
This is a coordinated assault against the last Russian ally on the mediterranean. They note the same as the Shi'a press does (attack on tolerance for non-Sunnis), and also note the pipeline project that would deliver oil from.
Problem: of course this too is state propaganda.
4) Catholic information sources (there is/was no shortage of Monasteries in Syria)
Well-funded Sunni extremists attacking (and killing) everyone in sight, with no identifiable cause. Ethnic cleansing, including even of Sunni's that don't want to fight for them. They seem to disagree with the notions that the fighters care about either Russian interests, or the pipeline (though the funding parties might think differently)
Problem: They're not very willing to come forward with information, and the few times they do they say they really fear retaliation. The ones that come forward are refugees.
In 2010, before this war, the BBC produced a 5-part documentary series called "Syrian School" -doing a fly-on-the-wall in four schools in Damascus. I only saw half of it, but looking back it is heart breaking. The short answer is, day-to-day life in a Syrian school was very similar and recognisable to e.g. the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUDxznlkm6Y
Not Syria but Syrian music, from Aleppo to be precise. I saw the Al-Kindi Ensemble (http://www.alkindi.org/) many years ago, and you can find an album on Spotify.
The whole evening was enchanting, and reading up on their story, then seeing footage of Aleppo, I realised how completely gone all that old beauty is. Daesh hates them too, no doubt, but then that's their thing.
This is totally off topic (and may even be taken to be insensitive considering the plight of the Syrian people), but I had to ask: is there any way that you/anyone/HNer could offer suggestions on how to deploy such a site for a non-developer...are there free/self-hosted themes and/or frameworks whose installation and use is noob-friendly enough to lend themselves well to interactive storytelling...? Any help/pointers would be immensely appreciated.
Refugee stats:
3.6 Women and Children
1.6 Men
God, I hate stats like these, why is it so hard to break up men, women and children separately to give more insight. Women are not the same as children.
Or is google trying to tell us that woman are basically, well, children?
The funny thing that this site is forbidden in Syria (By Google themselvs).
I am currently in Syria, tried opening it, it gave me 403 response (As all sites based on Google cloud services do)
A few links from Russian fotoblog:
http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-1/
>Meet 7-year-old Bana, who shared her experience of war on Twitter.
It's like the movie Wag the Dog. Sad to exploit a child like this.
I covered what it was like growing up in Syria before the war with fellow software developer Nada in my podcast if you'd like an in depth answer from an actual Syrian: https://mattfraser.co.nz/2017/04/08/s1e1-syrian-woman-nada/
The UN is not objective. They keep repeating the "peaceful protests" thing, but what sort of peaceful protests would aim to take down the president by force ? I'm not an Assad supporter but come on, we saw how that peaceful protests ended up in Libya; France was doing air strike to stop the Libya government to interrupt the protests, people killed their former leader with their bare hands.
The only peaceful end during the Arab spring was in Tunisia as their former president escaped in the beginning. A coalition of western countries took over their country to "establish democracy", and now Tunisian people are letting Europe teach them how to be a democracy. It's not free of course. I met bunch of Danish people getting paid really well for working for Tunisian government, as a part of the transition.
Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring. Assad gave a CNN interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition to democracy. But, he'll fight whoever choose violence. Whoever organized those protests already wanted a war, so it didn't matter what Assad said. Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon, Assad. Same propaganda machine most recently made campaigns about a group called White Helmets, founded by James Le Mesurier, a well known MI6 agent.
I traveled three times during the war to the Turkey - Syrian border, volunteered in the refugee camps there. There was not even one UN tent although every year they make big promises such as water pipeline, schools, etc. If you look at UNCHR website, you'll see they are asking money for regions where they don't even report from because they got no volunteers there at all. Later, I traveled to other middle eastern countries around Syria and met chance to meet UN volunteers, told them my observation about their operation. They explained me how they basically count victims and collect money. They bring an NBA or Hollywood star to one of the camps in either Iraq or Lebanon, take some photos and fill the pockets with millions of money that will be spent in 5 star hotels, business class flight tickets, western bars and restaurants in the wealthy neighborhoods of poor middle eastern towns.
If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell you, do some research. Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
This focuses on the tragedy but is unrealistic about the social reality. Syria has been loaded with sectarian divisions and strife for thousands of years. Many of the clans fighting in this war have been in conflict for very long periods of time already. The quote peace unquote that existed in Syria did so in large part because the leadership had so aggressively murdered its detractors. It is true that much has been lost, but it is false that this is all some kind of strange mystery that was put upon Syria from the outside. Conflicts festered in Syria for a very long time and eventually without adequate solutions bubbled over and initiated this catastrophe.
I visited for a couple of months just before the war. Such an amazing country with beautiful ancient cities.
Here are some photos I posted a while ago from a similar thread:
Highly recommended read (and less political than the title might imply): https://theringer.com/syria-barack-obama-legacy-853644abdd1b
The author has some great personal stories of what it was like to visit family in Syria under the Assad regime.
Would love to read this, but no scrollbar. I don't like websites dictating to me how I should consume content.
Nice presentation. First time I ever saw a web site use phone's gyrometer to rotate around for 360 view.
I dislike intellectually dishonest titles, that try to hide the humanitarian or politically oriented motif.
In this instance, much of the material is not about what Syria was like before, but about the horrors of war. And that Syrians are great refugees to have...
a) they do not really want to leave Syria and live in first world countries
b) they are more educated than Americans... With a strange 'inference and comparasing'
" .. 18 in 100 Syrians* have advanced degree vs 11 in 100 Americans ..." *Based on Syrian immigrants living in the US
What does it even mean? Syrian refugees have a projected higher contribution to US economy than Americans?
Overall, the article should have been in Arabic, English, Spanish and Chinese.
The article should have been labeled: "50 great reasons why you should want displaced Syrian refugees to immigrate into your country..."
It's an interesting article, but they really should have stayed away from the fancy navigation. I found it so unusable on my ipad that I gave up halfway through.
Syria was and still is beautiful and very rich in culture.
Just a pro-Assad post
Although it is a very complicated conflict, I would argue that most Syrians like Assad and not "just speak good because their afraid of the secret police". Just by looking at the videos [1] [2] which capture refugees voting, we can see genuinely excited people going to vote in someone they always believed. Even mainstream outlets had difficulty to capture otherwise. You can see in several places people talking like few would do of their own presidents. Obviously it was not the perfect country like every other, and there was people dissatisfied. But what the rebels want is not democracy, is Assad out. And Islamic law.
[1] Massive turnout for Syrian vote in Lebanon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vgx6ZmWywM
[2] Syrians abroad begin casting votes in presidential election https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyD61Q5KVNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXt5MhiPHas
Syrian to BBC Reporter: "You Are Not Telling the Truth About Syria" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKjsjEJDMUk
Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know from western media https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrian...
Syria: Damascus celebrates as Assad wins re-election https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zufjMn8Jf0
Dr. Bashar Hafez al-Assad wins post of President of Syria with sweeping majority of votes at 88.7% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-e7W_INzbo
Syria Election Celebrations 2014/06/05 إحتفالات سوريا بفوز الرئيس بشار الأسد بالإنتخابات https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsgEJvAMt4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jMxI16VAg
Video Pro-Assad used mistakenly by anti-Assad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X18sC1kCoK0
Pro Assad Rally - 03a - Aleppo, 19-10-2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3f9QB_z-_Q
Pro Assad Rally Damascus, Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDP8S3ry1A
Millions attend pro-Assad rally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNEFfdTNaqk
"I wish there were more definite sources detailing what the actual conflict is about. "
The death of Hamza Khateeb[1] comes to mind. Political and civil unrest was already underway, but the open violence against civilians including children sent Syria down a path. The government butchered that child among others caught for demonstrations or showing dissent.
"The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed"
Laughable commentary in the face of regular chemical weapons attacks by the regime and it's paramilitary forces/Hezbollah allies.
This is a government that besieges and pummels civilian areas with indiscriminate weapons until they accept forced displacement under the 'reconciliation' campaign. To say it's attitude has not changed since before the protests is absurd.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hamza_Ali_Al-Khateeb
Wow, I'd love to check this out but I got this message:
"It looks like you're using an older device or web browser. Please update your browser or visit on a newer device."
A bit of an odd thing to see when I'm on the latest version of Chrome on a Mac and it says "In partnership with Google" right under that. What gives?
Well it wasn't any more peaceful than the Danish embassy was set on fire i 2006 as a reaction to the Muhammad cartoons.
For the record: I don't think that Mid-East is ready for democracy yet (the majority wouldn't support basic human rights IMO) so the biggest mistake was for the "West" to support the Arab Spring. Yeah, those dictators were bad, but they were predictably bad.
Nature abhors vacuum and radical Islam is filling in.
P.S. I don't care about down votes.
I lived in Aleppo with my family 1962-1964. My dad was a US consul at the time. It's heartbreaking to see those pictures of that great city trashed. Half a century is a long time in the history of an American city, but the twinking of an eye in the history of Aleppo.
The people of the city were incredibly supportive of us -- their guests -- in the aftermath of JFK's murder. Strangers on the street came up to us to express condolences.
There was violence back then; the pan-Arab movement of Egyptian president Gamal abdel-Nasser was stirring up nationalist fervor, pro and con. He was frightening and annoying Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present ruler, so government forces were cracking down on Nasser supporters.
But nothing like this.
A family of Syrian refugees lives in my town, and I'm proud to call them friends. Their eldest daughter is pulling straight As in high school. They get hassled sometimes by 'murican yahoos, which is stupid, but still better than being in the Jordanian refugee camp they came from.