STORY SUMMARY

What began in Syria as a revolt against an oppressive regime has evolved into a sectarian civil war and, more recently, into a proxy conflict.

Today, Syria represents Russia’s only remaining toehold in the Arab world, while all of Assad’s regional opponents are U.S. allies.

Indeed, government forces have devolved into a sectarian army, motivated by the fear that, if the largely Sunni rebels are victorious, they will annihilate the Shiite-affiliated Alawite minority that has ruled Syria for decades.

Prior to that, the last great Sunni-Shiite battle in the Middle East involved near-constant war between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and Iran’s Shiite Safavid Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Since the 1970s, the Assads have failed to foster Arab nationalism in order to unite the religiously divided population, resorting instead to divisive sectarian politics to control Syria’s population.

Syria’s Sunni population, inspired by the revolutions in other Arab countries and outraged by the regime’s brutality, simply stopped being afraid – a potentially game-changing development for Arab authoritarianism.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2013/May-17/217402-from-revolt-to-nearly-intractable-sectarian-stalemate.ashx#ixzz2TiluBL7s
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)