Bashar al-Assad’s Syria Is Not Secular, Sovereign or Independent

Despite Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to delegitimize the opposition as sectarian, Islamist, and foreign, justifying his own brutality, Assad’s Syria is anything but secular, sovereign, and independent.

by Matthew DeMaio

In the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s missile strike against a Syrian military airbase, some decried the action for being taken against a so-called secular, sovereign and independent government. Spanning the ideological spectrum, those who embrace this characterization of the Syrian regime have often deployed it to defend Bashar …