TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Six months into the uprising against the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the confrontation continues to be mainly defined as one pitting the country’s majority Sunni population against the minority Alawites who form the backbone of the regime.

The country’s other sects – the Christians, Druze, Ismaelis – generally have stayed on the sidelines as the uprising has intensified and grown bloodier, nervously pondering a future that some fear may echo the sectarian strife that plagued Iraq from 2003.

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