Assad's plan to divide Syria....

By fanning sectarian strife...

“I’m full of anger and sadness when I think of Egypt,” emails a protester from Syria’s capital of Damascus, who asked to be referred to as Rana to protect her identity. Months earlier, when I met her during my stay in Damascus, Rana was full of vigor and excitement when talking about how the budding Syrian revolution could mirror Egypt’s. “The protests are growing. Everyone, no matter if they are Muslim or Christian, Sunni or Shi’ite, is uniting to topple this killer system peacefully,” she said at the time.

But, as a bloody summer draws out, Rana is worried that President Bashar Al Assad’s brutal tactics are fueling an increasingly disturbing sectarian spin on the current unrest. “There is now sectarian resentment in the coastal towns where different sects live together, some with the regime and some against it,” Rana wrote in her latest email to me. Indeed, by labeling the opposition movement a Sunni-led terrorist revolt and allowing members of his own sect to loot and pillage Sunni towns, Assad is fanning the flames of sectarian hatred—and some protesters, despite their initially peaceful, pluralistic intentions, are starting to buy in as well.