I feel really bad that I don’t really know what’s going on in Syria, who’s fighting who, what the background is, what I should be hoping will happen. Is there a good explainer anywhere so I can get up to speed and at least know what the news is on about?
I fear I need a more basic starting point. I understand that terrible things are happening, but I don’t really know why.
A year old, but this is a useful primer
Cheers.
So Assad, in charge, and awful. Backed by Russia.
ISIS - obvious shitcunts.
Moderate rebels trying to take down Assad - backed by UK and US.
And at the moment in Aleppo it seems like Assad is ruthlessly purging the moderate rebels?
Pretty much. Although there are a whole heap of disparate groups under the ‘moderate rebels’ umbrella, some not at all moderate.
This is good too
Is it also now a proxy war between the US and Russia?
What’s interesting/sick is that you would think beseiged civilians/murdered children would be pretty clear cut but a lot of BTL comments under various articles are horrifically cruel. To the effect of here come more immigrants/how many are terrorists/they look pretty healthy for beseiged etc.
Pretty despairing stuff not helped/actively fostered by a totally indifferent political and media scene.
There’s a lot of very obvious Russian or pro-Russian astroturfers at work in every article with comments switched on. This iteration of Putin’s Russia is a really worrying proposition.