... kurds kurd alawite Since the upsurge of revolutionary opposi-tion to Bashar al-Assad s dictatorship began around March 2011, the world has been riv- eted by Syria, a country about which most people had previously known little or nothing. Those brave activists animating the nonviolent uprising...

... Alawite Sunni Bashar al-Assad Russia Iran Kurds Lebanon Turkey 331 The first year and a half in the current round of Syria s long civil war took as many lives as the three-week orgy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. In both cases, some 25,000 to 30,000 people...