How much does your country mean to you?

What would you sacrifice for it?

If it were torn apart by war, would you stay or go?

Or might your answer depend on just how bad things get.

I'm Mike Thompson.

I've been covering Wars for the BBC for the past 15 years,

and I know these aren't abstract questions.

Empty home after empty home. Stretch out as far as I can see.

Over here a broken plate lies on the ground and just here a torn dress trodden into the dirt beneath this straw-topped hut beside me.

Scenes like this are common right along this road.

Those people in D.R. Congo chose to run in the face of murderous drug-addled child soldiers of the LRA. Other civilians in other conflicts have to make

their choice. This man who I met in Mali, faced with fanatical Islamist invaders chose to fight.

It's a question of faith.

Either you run or not.

I've heard more than enough of this situation,

and it really disturbs me.

Fight or flight, stay or go.

For the past six years,

millions of Syrians have also been faced with that dilemma.

In that time, more than five million have chosen to flee the civil war. I've been covering that conflict but at a distance. It's been

by turns too dangerous or logistically impossible in the case of besieged places like East and Aleppo for me to be on the ground.

But smartphones and the internet have given me electronic access and I've been able to talk to many people caught up in it.

...