This is popular front a podcast focus on the very niche and kind of geeky

details of Modern Warfare with me Jake Hanrahan. Today we're speaking to Elizabeth Serkov.

She's a researcher and writer with a big network of people she speaks to across Syria and has

been for a long time.

She's going to be speaking about how the Free Syrian

Army's rebellion against the Assad regime failed, more specifically how it was

crushed by various different actors and situations in the region.

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Yeah, so I thought what might be most useful maybe is for you to go back into the history a little bit

you know how did the Syrian revolutions start how did the war you know how did it turn from this street movement into a war

because I think a lot of people have kind of forgotten because you know the war has been

going on so long now the civil war that is raging now in Syria or what could even be termed as a proxy war

and international war started as just another uprising and the

uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring.

So protests erupted in Darah and in Damascus in March 2011 and quickly spread to other cities and towns across Syria.

Syrian demographics are complicated and the ruling regime is dominated

by the aloe sect and members of other minority communities such as Christians and

Druze often benefit from the regime or at least feel protected by it to some extent.

And the majority of the population is Sunni Muslim Arab.

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