Your friends live in some bad places.
I did not plan any of that. It just happened.
The ones in Syria, I made here on the web. The others not so.
I’ve followed a lot of conflicts. Since Twitter it has become more interesting. I’ve always been able to find a trustworthy local that I built a friendship and trust upon. With most of them, we still keep “sort of” in contact. Not as often but still friends. I send them article that I think they might be interested in and we discuss the reality from our different perspectives.
Not much of that remains from the 2009 Iran conflict. Only two that are outside of Iran.
Never really made those connection in the Ukraine conflict, it was relatively short. Had friends but it ended pretty quick.
Egypt? I still have 4-5 good friends there. We still send each other messages about common interests. That one was shorter than the one in Syria. But I worked closely with a blogger in Cairo and a few others that were active in the removal of Morsi.
Made some friend connected to the Libya mess. Both Gaddafi’s situation and then in Benghazi. That one lead eventually to Syria.
Syria has been a 3-4 year journey. Not sure where that will end. No one can see the future in that Region.
There were others that I did not list. shorter duration.
But I’ve been following things like this since the mid 1970’s. Mode of operation has changed with technology.
Forgot about Honduras. I spent quite a while before and after Zelaya was removed involved with that.
Still have a blogger friend there and a writer for a newspaper. She is a professor too. Don’t have exchanges very often but are still certainly friends.