No war in Aleppo?

A video from the Swiss broadcaster SRF shows scenes from Aleppo in Syria: people celebrating, splashing around in a pool and in the best holiday mood. The world is in perfect order.

And, no, these pictures are neither fake nor old photos. These are real recordings from Syria and everyone should be aware of that: Syria is not a uniform war zone and actually has areas in which no fighting is taking place.

This video also includes an accompanying article, which unfortunately is not linked on Facebook, although it is written with great care and also includes explanations of these strong contrasts. We'll catch up on that at this point; the official source of the video can also be found in the accompanying article. Article and video were published on the SRF website on September 6, 2016. The title is “The war-torn Aleppo between misery and luxury [ 1 ]” and clearly shows the direction of the content: in this article, as well as in the video, the contrasting living conditions in Aleppo are the main theme, here you can already read in the introduction:

On the one hand, desolation and poverty, on the other hand, life being celebrated. This has always been the case in Syria. However, the images of disturbing contrasts from war-torn Aleppo raise questions. SRF Middle East correspondent Pascal Weber provides explanations.

In other words: the goal is to point out exactly this discrepancy. The SRF describes here exactly how these differences arose and that it is not a new phenomenon, but is rooted in Syrian culture.

The war is omnipresent in Aleppo and throughout Syria. “You can't show the horror too drastically. The suffering and despair are immense,” Weber makes clear from the outset. At the same time, there are people who can enjoy their wealth. However, only a very small part of a wealthy upper class. They live exclusively in government-controlled areas.

Is the lying press keeping peace in Syria from us?

There is war in Syria. Civil war has been raging in Syria since spring 2011. Again and again we receive terrible images of the theaters of war, but also other images. Images of “intact” cities, which have so far been largely spared from the civil war. Of course, in the media reports you see the destroyed areas rather than the intact areas, but these uncontested areas were not kept secret either.

Another such city is the port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. Latakia has not seen any major unrest. This is what Der Spiegel writes about it [ 2 ]:

The 400,000-inhabitant city of Latakia is a stronghold of the Assad regime in Syria. There were protests here at the beginning of the uprising against the dictator, but these were suppressed in August 2011. Since then, the city has been largely spared from the war. A large proportion of the residents of Latakia and the surrounding area are Alawites, meaning they belong to the same religious community as the Assad clan.

The Spiegel article also shows that more than 1,000 Russian soldiers are stationed and welcome in the region.

“They have come to defend us. The least I can do is entertain them for free.”

More videos from Latakia

The Reuters news agency also published a video in 2014 in which it was also described that Latakia was untouched by the civil war.

Latakia residents live peacefully in a city untouched by Syrian war

The video can be seen >> here <<. There is also a CBS video from Latakia:

Important to know!

Therefore, it is fundamentally important to know that Syria also has geographical areas that are not so badly or hardly affected by the war. We therefore also consider the article and the SRF's reporting to be important and you should read the entire article.

War-torn Aleppo between misery and luxury