Many analysts say that only a strong man could unite these three areas into one country, and Iraq had one strong man after another. But in reality the people were never unified, they were only frozen with fear. In the one place which the dictators could not see, people’s minds, few bought into the propaganda of the state

In Syria, until 2011 many communities lived side by side in the towns, cities and countryside, but there were still distinct areas in which a particular group dominated. As in Iraq, locals would always tell you, ‘We are one people, there are no divisions between us.’ However, as in Iraq, your name, place of birth or place of habitation usually meant your background could be easily identified, and, as in Iraq, it didn’t take much to pull the one people apart into many.

— I Am Not Angry! (عصبانى نيستم)

— الحشاشين

"El sueño de la razon produce monstruos"
By Francisco Goya

You can't have the full range of human experience without going through extreme suffering and facing profound pain and despair.

An easy, unchallenging, and relatively comfortable life is deficient because the individual wouldn't have an opportunity to reach and look beyond the borders of his comfort zone and "gaze into the abyss." The comfortable individual is confined to his small habitat, and hasn't traveled far and wide through the whole territory of life.
Another deficiency is that the comfortable individual has a distorted vision of life. Such a human being may exaggerate his suffering or belittle the good things that he has because his ability for evaluation is fucked up. As the poem goes:
وتَعظُمُ في عَينِ الصغيرِ صغارُها
وتَصغُرُ في عَينِ العظيمِ العظائمُ
Such a life, as unchallenging as it is, tends to breed its own petty challenges and disasters, and brings inevitably a malicious kind of suffering, not from hardships, but from the exaggeration of minor inconveniences. As the saying goes:
مَن عَظَّمَ صغارَ المَصائِب، إبتُلِيَ بكِبارِها

«اللّهم إنْ كانَ هذا يُرضِيك فَخُذ حَتّى تَرضىٰ»