Now they've been smashed and scattered to the winds. Huge numbers of the fled Iraq to (ironically) Syria; now they're fleeing Syria to God-knows-where.
Seems like every time we upend a good old fashioned tyrant, we get a trampling herd of crazed islamists instead.
I understand why Christians would side with a clod like Assad. He's way better than the competition.
It’s been lost in the conversation but the Alawites have Christian connections pre-dating Mohammud. Basher, being Alawite, has always used the 15% or so of the Syrian population that is Alawite/Christian to run the gov’t and the Army. And early on in the Syrian spring it was noted that one of basher’s options was to concentrate his strongest defense in the Alawite area so as to create a Redoubt (ala Hitler) that he could fall back to and preserve himself and his core supporters. It shouldn’t suprise ANYBODY that what’s left of the Syrian Army would fight the hardest to defend the home neighborhood. Unless someone decides to actually take out Basher himself I fully expect Syria to wind up as two or three smaller units-—and don’t forget the Kurdz have a vote in this hootenanny also. A good deal of this whole Arab Spring thing is the rest of the Ottoman Empire going back to zero. As the Russians found out, it’s really tough to make a country out of two or three dozen tribes who don’t like each other, especially if you don’t treat them fairly.