Who are the Alawites, and is Syria on the brink of more violence?

Syria has seen weeks of relative peace since the fall of the decades-long Assad regime, with a newly formed caretaker government overseeing the end of the country's bloody civil war. But the country hasn't been able to start completely afresh. In recent days, members of the Alawite minority were executed, followed by attacks on security forces by gunmen still loyal to Assad. An estimated 1,400 people were killed. Shere are we now with this complex and fragile peace in Syria? Are we looking at the country sliding into another civil war? And what is life like under the new government? We're joined by Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian academic who specialises in the political economy of the Middle East.

Joseph's suspension from his university is mentioned in the podcast, and you can read more about that here.

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