The arrest and torture of several 15 year old boys in March sparked a national protest movement in Syria calling for the fall of the Assad government, to the surprise of policymakers and pundits alike that once saw the Syrian regime as immune from widespread popular unrest. Marwan Maalouf, an international human rights lawyer who oversaw human rights and democracy promotion in the Middle East for Freedom House from 2009 to 2011, and Khattar Torbey, an ...