A Quora member asked this question: What was Syria like before the war and chaos?
It's not the first time someone asks that particular question and it's coming very often on the social Q&A wiki platform.
One of the answers contained a lot of propaganda out of hatred or maybe some ignorant taking information from unbiased sources, so I added the following there as a comment to his answer then as a full answer:
My answer on the subject:
I wrote the following in a reply comment to one of the propaganda answers and I’ll just paste it here again as it is as it’s self-explanatory:
I can imagine the person who wrote this reply could also be working for the Qatari’s states media Al-Jazeera, the most discredited news channel after Saudi Al-Arabia.
Yes, the Syrian salaries were half of those in neighboring countries but you failed to mention the cost of living in Syria was 1/5th of that of the cheapest neighboring country. The income taxes are 1/4th of that in Germany, for instance, social security pays pensions to the children of the dead and until the last living one of the grandchildren of the dead, I never saw such thing in any developed country.
Check this out: Damascus the Cheapest Cost of Living City in the World
Buying cars, how about taking a loan like 99% of the world’s population who buy cars? You pay price plus interest, did you mention that public transportation was very much available and covers the entire country for peanuts compared with that in Lebanon, for instance, or Jordan, or anywhere else?
You found people scavenging food out of garbage pre-crisis? Or they were extracting bottles and other items for selling? Name a country in the world that doesn’t have this, but to look for food in the garbage, go to Saudi and see how they pick up food from the garbage, In Syria we never had a hungry person, they could simply just walk into any mosque or church or charity or even private restaurants and mention the word hungry and they’ll get fed for free, many would give them cash as well. The word ‘hungry’ itself would strike the nerves of any Syrian that time, unless you’re talking about another Syria which we didn’t know.
Bribes for hiring, maybe, but my experience during my FREE university study I was asked to do a 1 month practical work to present it to the next year in college and I went to a public establishment, it was involved in social security to be more precise, and showed the paper from the college and they gave me some tasks in one of their departments which was having backlog in preparing for automating, I helped them and did finished what I was given with almost no mistakes and I was paid a salary which was not in the terms but they found a way to pay me as a contractor, then I was offered to work for them the rest of the summer, I did, next year they contacted me and I was offered a job in the PUBLIC establishment with a salary at par with their permanent staff. Mind you, Syrians used to work from 8 - 2 ONLY 6 days a week, Christians even get 2 hours on Sunday mornings exemption.
For housing, yes if you want to live in the Downtown or upscale district you’d have to pay for that, but did you try any of the fully serviced suburbs? What about trying in one of the cooperative housings available in each city? Or take a mortgage like Americans do and keep paying the rest of their lives and when they fail 2 consecutive payments they lose everything and more.
How about in Saudi, the richest country on the planet 3 million Families, not individuals, do not own a house?
Here’s a reference: 3 Million Saudi Families Do Not Own Houses
You also failed in the reply about the political life in Syria, which is a must to mention. You said in Syria there was only one ruling party, and that’s utter false, in the country there were 19 licensed parties most of which had representatives in the parliament, 5 of them and later became 9 including the Baath Party, the largest in the country, created a very strong coalition that ruled for a long time, if you like to compare with the so-called ‘only democracy in the Middle East, see for how long Netanyahu is been in power, and see for how long the Likud party is in power, or compare that with the only 2 parties dominating the US and 2 parties dominating the British ruling for decades. The Syrian cabinet seats were distributed among the ruling coalition parties, the top public posts as well, in addition to independent individuals not members of any political party in the country.
What did you offer us instead? The democracy of ISIS, FSA heart scavengers, or the Nusra Front (al-Qaeda Levant) head choppers? There’s a saying that you could have used since you were very much power-seeking: If you can’t beat them join them, why didn’t you join any of those parties and grew up in the ranks, they had from liberals to conservatives to secular to communists among the same coalition parties… For a variety. Their main agreement was on the country’s foreign policy and their disagreements were on everything from A to Z, you name it they were debating it. Even the Syrian parliament had many independent members elected and were voicing their demands and criticism there. During the late Assad days there was an entire government sacked one minister after the other in the parliament for corruption and incompetency, it was the last Abdul Raaof Kassem government.
You spoke about refugees, go to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, or anywhere nearby and see how they treat the Syrian refugees, then come back here and comment.
End of my answer there
When you want to learn about any topic don't take the info from one source, especially if that source is either a proven liar like western mainstream media and their MENA stooges, or people with agendas like western politicians working to please the lobbyists who placed them in power, not the people who voted for them, try to source information from different sides of any issue and then most importantly apply common sense, logic and your own evaluating. For instance like in the Syrian case: Do you think a country that invaded Iraq on the bases of fake allegations of WMDs and terror link cheered up with its mainstream media propagandists will not try to invade another country using the same lies? Well how about they've been doing it in over 50 countries and continue to do that, will you trust them, again? Or for instance when they tell you foreign Al-Qaeda fighters coming from all sides of the planet into Syria to protect the Syrian people from their own brethren and children in the Syrian Armed Forces, just some logic and you'll be just fine.
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