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Threat of Regime Collapse in Syria Creates Uncertainty in Region
(Washington Post) Liz Sly - With Syria's minority Alawite government overseeing a majority Sunni population, its strategic location and its web of alliances including the radical Hamas and Hizbullah movements, regime change could look a lot more like it did in Iraq than in Egypt. Many believe that is why the international community, including the U.S., has offered such a tempered response to the bloodshed in Syria. "For the Obama administration, the last thing they want, just at the time they're withdrawing from Iraq, is a destabilized Syria that would lead to open season for jihadis to cross the border into Iraq,'' said David Lesch, a professor at Trinity University in Texas. Iraq's Shi'ite government also views with alarm the upheaval across the border, mindful that the collapse of Syria's minority government would almost certainly herald the rise of a Sunni state on its doorstep.