Syrian army, Hezbollah attack rebels in border town: opposition

[leveymg]

53. Please see the timelines for Syria and Libya excerpted at #52

Events leading up to both civil wars follow a parallel set of events. The public protests started out as calls for Days of Rage by exile groups in London and Paris. Response in the capitols were small and largely peaceful, with few injuries, before demonstrators coming out of Sunni mosques in regional flashpoints became violent and attacked public buildings. In both cases, undertrained and outnumbered police overreacted and used live ammunition and excessive force. Local populations in Benghazi and Daraa became enraged when snipers fired at both police and into the crowds. Some military units defected. Civil war.

It's in the casebook, "How to start an insurrection or coup" It's an old but effective volume, going back to the chapter strating with Iran, 1953. Or, you can see this process in recent action as chronicled at the Wiki Chronologies.

The picture that emerges is very different from the propaganda you probably saw on western corporate media or al-Jazeera, which is owned and controlled by the Qatari ruling regime.