Tornada

Great AMA thanks, I'm going to try and give an overview from an outsiders point of view for anyone who hasn't followed events in Syria, please feel free to correct my probable glaring mistakes

Assad (unelected leader of Syria, handed down by his father) was essentially operating an autocracy - a dictatorship. As dictators go he was relatively popular, however was still a police state, people disappeared, no opposition and effectively run by fear.

Fast forward to the Arab spring happening all across the region. This is the spark the country needed to go out and protest. Small at first, they grew in mass protests.

The regime (Assad) decided to crush the uprising (rather than flee, step down, hold elections, go into exile) - a lot of normal Syrians were shot, injured, killed. Students were thrown into military prisons, torture common.

A few months after this it escalated. Many soldiers defected bc they were horrified at what was happening, also people lost family, friends, some were long-standing enemies of Assad, others made so by events during uprising - essentially they formed armed groups to resist - one of the largest armed opposition groups was the FSA (formed mainly from defected military units)

As the months went on, both sides made gains and losses. Assad had the ruling elite, most of the military on his side, heavy armor, weapons - I mean at one stage a warship was shelling a town - however the more vicious the fighting got, the more it empowered the FSA, soldiers defected to them and so on.

So essentially there was a point, whereby it was Assad (dictatorship) trying to cling to power fighting the uprising. Extremely violent, mass shelling of cities (like Homs) and so on.

This is when the conflict was most black and white.

International peace efforts, resolutions, etc didn't work because Russia, a close ally of Syria was obstructing most. Intervention was unlikely bc of many factors, but they needed coherent international pressure on Assad which never materialised

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Assad was from a minority Shia sect (most of the pop. is Sunni) this attracted foreign fighters, as well as foreign funding (from Saudi, Qatar), plus the chance to remove Assad and install an Islamic state.

This is when it got really complicated and dirty and nasty.

Now there are hundreds of foreign jihadist groups. As you can imagine there is absolutely chaos. The FSA and jihadist groups do fight a common enemy (Assad) but have differing goals. FSA do not want to live in a religious prison if Assad were to fall, however they know they desperately need any support they can get.

Over 100,000 death, 10,000 children, many killed by snipers, even tortured (as young as one) - it's gruesome stuff. Generally the world is pretty much in consensus that the conflict needs to be stopped (over 2 million refugees and counting, the world's largest crisis at moment) but due to bullshit politics, the spectre of Iraq, the obstructionism, and many other factors - it just isn't happening, so the slaughter grinds on

Essentially it's "unwinnable" for Assad, however, if he falls, a second war will most likely begin between the moderate opposition (e.g. FSA) and the main jihadist groups

There are no "good guys". All sides have committed atrocities. However there are people fighting for principles we can understand here. Those groups certainly aren't the pro-Assad forces nor are they the jihadist groups.

Am leaving out many details - and it's just one overview (my own) from following for several years.

In short - it's exercising control over your property when you manufacture copies that can be regarded as theft; manufacturing something using your own property (network equipment, computer, storage) was never theft.

Apologies if I am completely misunderstanding the above..

But, for example, if I were to make a documentary on, let's say piracy, an expensive one, cost me a million euros. I borrowed the money from investors, family, friends and so on to fund the movie..

If one person took my documentary and copied it, put it up on pirate bay, everyone else downloads it - and let's say I got nothing.

To me that's fundamentally just .. well.. stealing?

Thanks for the reply.

Oh I agree there were violent elements present during the uprising. I was trying to point out that it wasn't a purely armed insurrection - it still had most of it's roots in genuine marches and protests (and funeral marches) against the ruling party

I fully agree that Assad has been making gains as well, but recently the ISIS movement (most of the Islamist fighters) have agreed a unified group with solid aims backed by billions from Qatar, Saudi and the likes - with the size of Syria's border - the fact that virtually every regional country is seriously pissed with Assad - that flood of foreign fighters is never going to stop as long as Assad in power.. he can retake areas, to hold them is another matter entirely, and to have a functioning country in the background is another. He may win control of portions of the country - but it will still be hell on earth with 10's of thousands of jihadists, suicide bombers, veteran extremists from Iraq, etc - FSA rebels have described many these religious warriors as absolutely fearless - to win control of Syria just doesn't seem possible anymore.

How do you correlate the reported fact that locals and relatives will often refuse to acknowledge that a victim of a drone attack was a militant or member of a specific group?

Also, how do you feel about the strong general support for airstrikes and drone attacks on IS? (whom are quite similar in tactics, violence and ideology to the militants in NW Pakistan)

reddit is outraged at everything NSA at the mo

yet half the posters in here seem to be gunning for a job doing what you do

oh reddit