in western countries and the Sunni clerics called for "days of rage." The center of exile activity was in Paris and London, and the initial impetus appears to have sprung from there, with the Saudis and GCC later providing most of the guns and money that went to the foreign fighters. Many of the events in Benghazi, Libya and Dara'a, Syria that resulted in the initial armed clashes with the regimes followed a similar pattern. Whether those nearly simultaneous events occurred by coincidence or by design is for history to tell. Even if this was initially cooked up in Langley (or by MI6, or the DSGE), it appears that others quickly took the lead on the ground.
The uprisings in Libya and Syria unfolded along lines of ethnic difference in both countries. But, they developed very differently, with Ghadaffi's core of support folding relatively quickly. On Syria, on the other hand, the recent history of deep and bloody Shi'ia-Sunni conflict became the overriding factor that the Ba'ath regime in Damascus held together and the expected coup or regime disintegration didn't occur. The ruling Alawite, which are only about 12% of the Syrian population, knew that if they lost control of the Syrian state and military, they would be exterminated. The slightly smaller Christian population also realized the danger of a Sunni takeover. The terrorist bombings carried out under the black flag by al-Qaeda linked groups helped to underline that shared vulnerability. I think the religious conflict was misunderstood and under-appreciated in Washington, Paris and London, and there really is no way to overcome it, short of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
So, we find ourselves in a bloody stalemate in a Jihad war that's primarily being fueled by the Saudis, Qatar the UAE, and Turkey. The conflict has already metasticized and it's only a matter of time before a full-scale Sunni-Shi'ia regional war breaks out, if the present course continues. I think the plan now is to negotiate a settlement whereby the Alawite/Christian minorities are guaranteed safety in the major cities they now control along the central coast nearest Lebanon, while the Saudi/GCC and Turkish-backed Salafist militias will stay in place and control northern Syria. There seems to be some notion that the "good" Jihadi groups -- those that utter some sort willingness to cooperate with the west -- will be armed and given the area in the South along the borders with Israel and Jordan, where the armed uprising began.
I don't know whether this is a workable arrangement, and it doesn't seem to me to be much real prospect for a sustainable "peace". In the longer term, the thinking seems to be to contain a divided and feuding Syria, following along the Beirut model. The Israelis will likely take a more assertive role as the Syrian military is degraded, and we have already seen the beginnings of that.
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