Syrian President Bashar Assad posing next to a portrait of his late father Hafiz Assad

In these two new videos below I want to point out why defeating President Assad has failed despite the many prognostications  that the Assad regime has little chance of surviving primarily because  his main support is drawn from the minority Alawi sect which is only about 15% of the total Syrian population. The Alawis are an offshoot from  Sevener  Islam and many Sunni Muslims do not consider them Muslims at all. In fact most Shi’a Muslims did not really think of them as fellow Shi’a until the Sunni Islamist revival. The more traditional Sunni Muslims denigrate the Shi’a and the militant Sunni radicals consider them as apostates.

The Islamist radicals have brought havoc to the Shi’a population of Iraq and in so doing have forced togather the Assad regime and the Shi’a of Iraq. This is ironic but typical of Arab politics in that for years the Assad government facilitated passage of suicide bombers and foreign fighters into Iraq to attack not only American forces but Shi’a civilians as well.

So in these videos and within the short time I have I try to point out some of the reasons the Assad government and army has held together. Part I is on the Syrian issue overall and part II on the Syrian military. A couple I mentioned SA Sadr city, I meant Assad city  the Syrian military city.