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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703387904576279271495896518.html
The Freedom Movement Comes to Syria
(Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - When the Arab revolutions hit Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, Bashar Assad claimed that his country would be bypassed because it was the quintessential "frontline" state in the Arab confrontation with Israel. Let them eat anti-Zionism, the regime had long thought of its subjects. Syria is riven by sectarian differences - there are substantial Druze and Kurdish and Christian communities - and in the playbook of the regime those communities would be enlisted to keep the vast Sunni majority at bay. This is the true meaning of the refrain by Bashar and his loyalists that Syria is not Egypt or Tunisia - that it would be shades of Libya and worse. The writer is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.