Syria: What if Turkey and Saudi Arabia install al-Qaeda in Damascus?
▻http://www.juancole.com/2015/05/turkey-install-damascus.html
We have seen this movie before. Syria is a multicultural society, with 14% Alawite Shiite, 5% Christian, other groups like Druze and Twelver Shiite and Ismaili, then 10% mostly Marxist Kurds, and a majority of the Sunnis are strong secularists. A Taliban-like group taking over the country would be just another huge catastrophe like 1996 in Afghanistan. Moreover, you can’t count out the Support Front rising to the top in that post-Assad government; nor, indeed, has Daesh been defeated, and it could make territorial gains.
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Pretty much anything that happens in Syria for the next 10 or 15 years is likely to be horrible. A victory for the Turkish-Saudi plan is only one of the potential horrors. But it would be a horror.