It is worth remembering that the initial protests in Syria were calling for social change, not regime change. It was the heavy-handed response of the Bashar Al-Assad government to the protests which changed attitudes and radicalised many ordinary people in the country. Assad could have responded peacefully, but opted to use violence against his own people; hundreds of thousands have since been killed, and millions have been displaced. The BBC put it like this: "When the government used deadly force to crush the dissent, protests demanding the president's resignation erupted nationwide."