What was Syria like before the war
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:<p>1) western and sunni middle eastern press: it&#x27;s all Assad&#x27;s (government&#x27;s) fault. People want democracy. Specifically this is supposed to be a response to violent repression of pro-democracy protests from March 2011.<p>Problem: very hard to believe. The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed, and the &quot;protesters&quot; do not seem very pro-democracy at all.<p>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.<p>2) shi&#x27;a middle eastern press<p>Coordinated Sunni attack against one of the two last multicultural&#x2F;tolerant middle eastern Countries (the other one being Iran, and while Israel is multicultural&#x2F;tolerant Iran doesn&#x27;t see it that way). It&#x27;s an attack to massacre the last vestiges of tolerance in the middle east.<p>Problem: obviously this is state propaganda. That doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s not true, of course, but there are military interests at stake by the same people who own these press.<p>3) Russian press (there were&#x2F;are hundreds of thousands of Russians from the Soviet union who lived in Syria)<p>This is a coordinated assault against the last Russian ally on the mediterranean. They note the same as the Shi&#x27;a press does (attack on tolerance for non-Sunnis), and also note the pipeline project that would deliver oil from.<p>Problem: of course this too is state propaganda.<p>4) Catholic information sources (there is&#x2F;was no shortage of Monasteries in Syria)<p>Well-funded Sunni extremists attacking (and killing) everyone in sight, with no identifiable cause. Ethnic cleansing, including even of Sunni&#x27;s that don&#x27;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)<p>Problem: They&#x27;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.