{"id":742,"date":"2017-09-28T14:35:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T14:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/?p=742"},"modified":"2017-09-28T14:35:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-28T14:35:18","slug":"742","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/2017\/09\/28\/742\/","title":{"rendered":"where the crisis began"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/05\/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html\">http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/05\/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Initially,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/03\/arab-spring-syria-revolution-betrayed-160314065558986.html\" target=\"_self\">lack of freedoms\u00a0<\/a>and economic woes fuelled resentment of the Syrian government, and public anger was inflamed by the harsh crackdown on protesters. Successful uprisings in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/tunisia.html\" target=\"_self\">Tunisia\u00a0<\/a>and Egypt energised and gave hope to Syrian pro-democracy activists. Many Islamist movements were also strongly opposed to the Assads&#8217; rule.<\/p>\n<p>In 1982, Bashar&#8217;s father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered a military crackdown on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/programmes\/aljazeeraworld\/2012\/05\/2012517131828948619.html\" target=\"_self\">Muslim Brotherhood\u00a0<\/a>in Hama, which\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/features\/2012\/02\/20122232155715210.html\" target=\"_self\">killed\u00a0<\/a>between 10,000-40,000 people and flattened much of the city.<\/p>\n<p>Although the initial protests in 2011 were mostly non-sectarian, armed conflict led to the emergence of starker sectarian divisions. Minority religious groups tend to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/opinion\/2011\/09\/2011912135213927196.html\" target=\"_self\">support\u00a0<\/a>the Assad government, while the overwhelming majority of opposition fighters are Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, but Syria&#8217;s security establishment has long been dominated by members of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/features\/2011\/10\/20111010122434671982.html\" target=\"_self\">Alawite\u00a0<\/a>sect, of which Assad is a member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/05\/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html Initially,\u00a0lack of freedoms\u00a0and economic woes fuelled resentment of the Syrian government, and public anger was inflamed by the harsh crackdown on protesters. Successful uprisings in\u00a0Tunisia\u00a0and Egypt energised and gave hope to Syrian pro-democracy activists. Many Islamist movements were also strongly opposed to the Assads&#8217; rule. In 1982, Bashar&#8217;s father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered a military crackdown on the\u00a0Muslim Brotherhood\u00a0in Hama,&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/2017\/09\/28\/742\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}