gusanos

This is the word I was looking for. Thank you.

My uncle (who lives in Aleppo) met Bashar al-Assad yesterday lmfao

:this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this: :this:

They love to say ACAB because there's a chance they'll be victimized by cops in their own country. But the military only does unspeakable things overseas, that makes them poor misguided and exploited souls.

I'm Syrian, this place is cool

Thanks, never seen this before

didn’t even object to me suggesting Assad winning the war might be one of the more preferable outcomes

Most Syrians* just want to live their lives and are tired of war and sanctions. If that means going back to 2010 and having Assad still in power, they absolutely would take it.

* that I know, though I think this view is widely held

I know this is The Narrative™, but I find it so hard to believe the first part. The drought was real but I find it hard to believe people were upset enough to go out and protest.

Any sane Syrian would have known what was coming. Anyone old enough would absolutely still remember Hama 1982. I just don't like how this narrative presents the protests as being so organic, especially with it being well documented that the West had longed for the destruction for Syria for decades.

The battle wasn't just in 2016, it started in 2012 and concluded in 2016. So a lot of the time between 2011-2014 was still defined by fighting, but it was more between the government and the opposition rather than fundamentalist groups that started to spring up I think in 2014. I can't help much more than that, I can't remember much about the war between 2011-2014.

Also you should just punch that person you were arguing with they're not worth your time.

It's difficult to answer your question because a lot happened from 2011 until now.

Within the civil war there were a lot of different phases where different sides were doing well, others poorly, etc. The situation now, as it has been since maybe ~2016 (around the conclusion of the Battle of Aleppo), is that Assad controls the vast majority of Syrian territory (thanks mainly to Russian military support).

You cannot understate the pure physical destruction that took place in this civil war though. Like, there's a reason people call the Battle of Aleppo "Syria's Stalingrad". The devastation is horrendous and you can only really understand it by looking at it now and knowing what the city was like before. Idlib, which is a city near Aleppo, was never re-captured. I'm not 100% clear on who controls it now but shit is still not good there. Also Erdoğan occupies parts of Syria near the border. I'm not very clear on the Kurds but they have their own region in the East and I'm not sure what their relations with Assad are tbh.

In terms of day to day life, shit has gotten much much much harder over the past couple years. Anybody not rich (and even people who were rich) who managed to get this far have been brutalized by the (hilariously named) Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act that the U.S. passed in 2019 (in Syria, you'll hear people say they have no money because of "Caesar", this is what they're referring to). Before the war 1 USD was like ~50 Lira (iirc) and in 2017 it was ~500. Thanks to the Americans, 1 USD is now like 2,500 Syrian Lira. People don't have the money to feed themselves or keep themselves warm. Physical destruction aside, the sanctions have honestly made life in Syria harder than the rest of the civil war did, it's fucking horrible.

tldr: Syria was destroyed, mainly by the U.S. if you can believe it. Oh and lots of millennia old history was destroyed. Hope this helped.

Trust me, I do.

🙄 This is an alt account.

hello