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impossible to sell goods to Syria or for Syrians to purchase goods from overseas. Broadly speaking, control of Syria during the civil war has been divided between Assad’s government, the united Free Syrian Army (FSA),theultra- fundamentalist IslamicState (ISIS),and theKurdish peoples. Each group believes they have the right to authority over the country, or at least over their own stretches of territory.Although various sides have agreed to cease-fires throughout the course of the war, none have proved permanent. Every effort by the international community to end the war peacefully has ended in failure.

Who is fighting whom in Syria?

Support for each side has grown the war in Syria to much larger proportions than the sum of its parts. The Syrian government in Damascus itself has the military support of Russia,who has helped turn the tides of the war, as well as Iran,who views the Shia govern- ment of Assad to be a valuable ally in its long-term goal to extend Shia authority throughout the Middle East.Military groups loyal to or funded by Iran have entered the civil war on the side of Assad, most notably the terrorist organization Hezbollah. The support of Iran for Assad has drawn in many of Iran’s enemies to the conflict, most notably Saudi Arabia, who considers Iran to be the greatest threat to its dominance in the Sunni Islamic world. In fact, the Syrian war can be considered a continuation of the Saudi-Iranian proxy wars playing out through the Middle East in countries like Lebanon and Yemen. Saudi Arabian support has resulted in more Sunni fundamentalist groups gaining power in

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