There Is NOTHING Arab Spring-y About the Syrian Conflict

The media consistently miss a central piece in the puzzle, writes Yilmaz Alimoglu:

Watching dozens of reports over many months on the BBC, CNN, PBS, CBC, and various other outlets, I haven’t seen a single presentation that even attempted to inform people of who and what the ‘Alawites’ are, or their relation to the Sunnis.

At best, some coverage does mention that the Alawites are a Shia denomination and that the conflict is split on Shia-versus-Sunni lines. But the same reports fail to mention that this sectarian divide in Syria is a proxy war between Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other.

The entire media coverage of the so-called Arab Spring fails to mention this. Instead, it tends to give the impression that the disputes sweeping the Arab world are a struggle between a populace eager for democracy and tyrants eager to hold onto power. This is very misleading. The model of daily information passage in North America equates to ‘the dumber the better.’