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Source: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/even-peace-may-not-save-syria
Even Peace May Not Save Syria
(New Yorker) Robin Wright - "I don't know whether or not Syria and Iraq can be put back together again," CIA Director John Brennan said earlier this month. "There's been so much bloodletting, so much destruction, so many continued, seething tensions and sectarian divisions. I question whether we will see, in my lifetime, the creation of a central government in both of those countries that's going to have the ability to govern fairly." "The CIA still estimates that there are fifteen hundred opposition militias," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. "The government [in Syria]...is getting weaker. It is defaulting to strongmen in villages, who form their own militias....They're like mafias. They have become their own powers." Syria is being re-tribalized. "All the little local identities - clan, village, tribe, sect - all pop up and accrue authority," Landis said.