PBS Frontline: Inside Assad's Syria - what Syrians really think (VIDEO)

Martin Smith
Frontline
Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:37 UTC

© Mahmoud Hebbo / Reuters

For weeks, the world's eyes have been fixed on the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria for Europe. But what is life like for those left behind? Correspondent Martin Smith goes "Inside Assad's Syria" to report from government-controlled areas as war rages, with on-the-ground reporting and firsthand accounts from Syrians caught in the crisis.

Comment: A reader from Fort Russ comments:

I see no objectivity in a piece which cuts footage of the "barrel bombs" (or actually standard gravity bombs, but released by Mi-24 helicopters) together with pictures of explosions and their aftermath from other events, including suicide car bombings of Damascus. It's great editing, telling a story but not telling the truth. Or ridiculing Syrians for trying to live a "normal" life and enjoy it while it lasts, going to a disco, or to a beach, or attending a concert. This idiot meets scores of people, refugees from Aleppo and Homs and doesn't ask himself, how come 7 million displaced Syrians ran to the state controlled areas (Sunnis in Lattakia), running to Assad not from Assad. He meets people supporting the state everywhere and yet never pauses the question, why Assad should go when Syrians want him to stay... But there is one thought that sticks to me after watching the doc. The contrast of the alternatives in Syria. The state side standing for secularism, normality above the dividing lines of ethnic and religious background and the other side: "the scum of the earth are selling now women of the minorities as slaves".....and we are supposed to support the scumbags!

Indeed. Smith tries his hardest to portray Assad and his government in the worst light possible, but the actual people he interviews suggest things are not so simple. That is the real value of this documentary: what Syrians themselves think. In the process, PBS ends up broadcasting a little bit of truth: the 'peaceful protests' were not so peaceful, and the 'protesters' shot first. The Syrian government offers amnesty to rebels who choose to stop fighting. Whatever one thinks of Assad, Syria needs the existing infrastructure and institutions in order to survive, and the only alternatives are the scumbag jihadis and a woefully inexperienced and inept 'opposition'.