You don't seem to know much about Syria, especially for a historian. Its not like protests turned violent and armed themselves without a reason. Assads regime is on par to be one of the worst regimes through history, second to only North Korea's currently. Dont you know anything about Syria and how it was ruled since 1970? Concentration of wealth and power? Syrians have every right to be citizens in their country. Have you never heard of Hama massacre 82? About the regimes golags? Dont you have any clue about the behavior of this regime? Protesters were caught and dragged to gulags, slaughter houses and torture chambers. In the street they were sprayed at and shot at directly using ak47, snipers and others right off the bat. Like this one 17 april 2011 https://youtu.be/3HTmXxysiDY . Its only basic common sense that people will arm themselves and situation will escalate. In fact if you want my opinion, people should have armed themselves right from the start. The regime will escalate at wvery point after that in a characteristic deadly grudge for Syrians. And let me tell you that I have no sympathy at all for Alawaites. A very rough percentage of 75% supported/support the regime in doing everything it did, in order to stay at the top of hyrarchy of power in Syria, and out of ancient grudge*. There is an exaggerated saying, yet has lots of truth, that Bashar Assad is the best Alawi. They were/are the backbone of the regimes army and militias in carrying out horrible massacres. I didn't identify myself as Sunni before the revolution, but now i do, or to be exact, im trying to forget about this fuck cluster of a country. I don't hate Alawaits because they are Alawayts, but because they did what they did. I have alawait friends, and they are all clear in their stance against the regime. Imagine what would happen if US is ruled by a 10% ethnic minority the way Syria was ruled by Alawaits? I mean 1% and politicians are mostly whites and you have someone like Trump who spreads racial(sectarian) tension and you find people following him for that.