A little help please on Syria ..... how many differnet side are in play with Syria?

[Botany]

Sunnis, Kurds, Turks, Alawites, Druze, Iraqis, al Qaeda, Israel, Russia, Lebanon and don't forget all that
oil sitting under the desert in western Iraq.

Both John Kerry and President Obama are good men but Syria seems like a real "rat's nest" of problems
.... If somebody could tell me about a "show of force" that would punish the Syrian leadership for
their use chemical weapons and not cause God knows what blowback I would be for it but I just don't
see it.

thanx

[Laelth]

1. Syria is quite complicated. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[dkf]

2. Add 1400 separate anti-Assad groups each with their own agendas and it is a mess.

Moreover one a group takes over an area, they often become more interested in ruling that area vs fighting Assad. They sometimes use their grievances to kill whoever they want, a bunch of wanna be despots.

[brooklynite]

3. Actually, no it's not...

...the map looks complicated, but a lot of that variety is in Lebanon.

from the CIA Factbook:

Sunni Muslim (Islam - official) 74%, other Muslim (includes Alawite, Druze) 16%, Christian (various denominations) 10%, Jewish (tiny communities in Damascus, Al Qamishli, and Aleppo)

I was in Syria two weeks before the protests that led to the conflict started and had a chance to chat with a number of locals about the political situation. The population is overwhelmingly Sunni, but the Government and military leadership is Alawite. There was general acknowledgement at the time that the Government was corrupt, but Assad was generally seen as improving matters.

That attitude changed when protests began to call for greater Democracy, in response to the Arab Spring developments in Tunisia and Egypt. The Government cracked down immediately, and the Christian minority sided with the Government, apparently out of fears of religious persecution if the Shiites got control.

The largely secular and organic Free Syrian Army made reasonable progress in fighting the Government and gaining control of territory in the north part of the Country (around Aleppo). What has happened subsequently is that outside groups (Hezbollah from Lebanon, Al-Qaeda from Irag have stepped into the fray and neither "side" now appears to have a coordinated fighting force.