he conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of discrediting the opposition and holding his base. As Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, experts on the Middle East who have been in Syria, wrote in a recent essay: "Rather than reform, the regime's default setting has

aying a tactical game in which he calculates how far he can go each day without incurring the collective wrath of the international community, said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. More than 7,500 people have been killed in the uprising. Turkey also must weigh ot

e conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of discrediting the opposition and holding his base. As Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, experts on the Middle East who have been in Syria, wrote in a recent essay: "Rather than reform, the regime's default setting has