User:Aarchiba/The Great Encyclopedia Showdown/Politics of Syria today

The question: what's the political situation in Syria like? Who are the major players? What are the major tensions? Some history would be nice, and some indication of the future.

Before starting, I know a little about the politics; I know Bashar al-Assad is the President; he was initially seen as very progressive but Damascus Spring was short-lived. I know there's something going on with Lebanon; Syria seems to be pulling out.


 * Britannica: Syria
 * Wikipedia: Syria (vandalized version) (version fixed about fifteen minutes later), Politics of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad

Britannica
The article on Syria appears to be the relevant one. It is quite extensive. I read the whole "Government" section, but it is about the structure of the government and courts (reasonably enough) and contains little information about the current status.

The history section seems more promising, although only two paragraph discuss events since 1990 (and the assumption of power of Bashar al-Assad).

Wikipedia
Syria has a section "Politics of Syria" which, when is comes to recent politics, is longer and more detailed than the Britannica. This section also refers to the main article Politics of Syria and to Asad regime. I noticed no discrepancies of fact. The article had been vandalized two hours before I read it, removing the history section 1970-2000, but User:Yuber fixed it before I could (keeping a minor edit of mine). If I read this section (deviating slightly from the rules) I see some information about the Muslim Brotherhood and the opposition to the Assad government.

Politics of Syria appears to contain almost the same text as Syria, plus some more-or-less tabular data, lists of political parties and so on.

Hafez al-Assad (redirected to by Asad regime) has some information on the human rights abuses and problems (the Hamah massacre and the Tadmor prison shooting) of the early regime; Bashar al-Assad has some more information about the current situation and the suggestion that he may not be entirely in control.