ABSTRACT
Socio-political and psychological preconditions for the protests in Tunisia and Egypt were extant in Syria as well. They had been ripening for a long time. Corruption of the state apparatus and at the top, the authoritarian nature of the regime and repressions by security agencies caused rejection on part of a significant part of the lower classes. The first anti-government protests in Syria began on 26 January 2011. They were not mass. The bitterness of the warring sides in the first year of the civil war was off-scale. During the fighting near the Syrian city of Al-Qusayr, one of the rebel commanders demonstratively committed cannibalism, eating the heart and liver of a killed soldier of the government troops in front of cameras. It is understandable why Syrian emigrants, who had adopted Western liberal values and were thirsty for power, dreamed of overthrowing the Baathist regime.
