And as I detailed, the West has long been working to change the government of Syria, even decades prior during Hafez Assad's time.
How I saw Syria vs. what it looks like through Al-Qaeda-tinted glassesIn April 2014, I met an American living in Latakia who recalled reading a LA Times blog post alleging a protest which had turned violent in her city three years prior, but which never happened. According to her, she had been to the places mentioned in the report that day, and there was no unrest.
Years later in Damascus, I met and interviewed a Syrian doctor who had been based in Dara'a province in March 2011. He described how his hospital operated at normal capacity at the time. At the same time, he says he saw a repeated report on another mainstream outlet that said the facility was overwhelmed, not enough doctors were available, and moreover, the hospital was denying treatment to civilians, when in fact the hospital directives were to treat civilians before soldiers.
Since a core message in regime-change reporting on Syria has been that the people want the president gone, it's worth noting that President Bashar Assad is actually quite popular among Syrians. In fact, I was surprised to come across a January 2012 admission of this, in the Guardian, one of the worst purveyors of war propaganda on Syria.
Assad's popularity has only steadily grown. From the early months of 2011 to late 2011, 2012, and beyond, Syrians held mass demonstrations in support of their president.
In Lebanon in 2014, I witnessed a mass show of support during the presidential election. These were people determined to vote, and the people I spoke with proudly declared their support for Assad.
From 2014 to my last visit in 2020, Syrians have maintained to me that while there are a host of changes they do want for the country, seeing Assad step down is not one of them.
The Syrian government issues visas to journalists from the worst propaganda outlets (including the BBC, Channel 4, the New York Times and CBC), yet they have reported a vastly different Syria than that which I or my colleagues know.
In their Syria, the suffering of civilians in government-controlled areas doesn't exist. If mentioned, they are dubbed "regime supporters," thus somehow deserving of the shelling and other abuse perpetrated by terrorist factions.
The outlets don't take into account the millions of internally displaced Syrians who have fled terrorism or fighting elsewhere in Syria and taken shelter in government-controlled areas, frequently coming under attacks of terrorists.
When greater Aleppo, with around 1.5 million people, was for years being attacked with gas canister bombs, mortars, grad missiles and sniping by terrorists occupying areas of the city (by November 2016 resulting in the deaths of nearly 11,000 civilians), media downplayed this, or simply didn't mention it at all.
Even when mixed Christian and Muslim areas of Old Damascus were shelled by terrorists occupying eastern Ghouta - and they were shelled for years, until Ghouta's liberation - this terrorism, and the many maimed and killed, was underreported, if reported at all.
In one instance, after an elementary school was mortared (killing one child and injuring over 60 more) the BBC's reporter later disingenuously wrote, "the government is also accused of launching [mortar shells] into neighborhoods under its control."
In summer of 2016, I travelled around Syria, meeting Syrians who had started their lives anew, displaced by terrorists, and meeting Syrians who had survived terrorist attacks only to be living within a few hundred metres proximity to them and at daily risk of sniping and shelling.
And all the while, the same war propagandizing, script-reading media glossed over the horrific realities of life under terrorist rule, which included imprisonment, torture, starvation, rape of women and public executions of civilians by sword or point-blank assassination.
'Fallen' cities, 'chemical attacks' and other liesI've gone to many key cities and towns post-liberation from terrorist factions. Western media inevitably said these areas had "fallen," bizarrely trying to claim that life under the government would be worse than life under the extremists who easily and routinely murdered civilians in the street.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
