This is my second episode looking at the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. Having looked at the Kurds in Turkey and in Syria, today we’ll look at the Kurds in Iraq and Iran.

I’m looking at the Kurds today, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. That fact alone makes it necessary for us to know something about their history, I think. Well, this is the first of two episodes doing that.

This episode sets out to explain the reasons behind the schism in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shi'ites or Shias, as well as the consequences of the schism.

A final episode on Syria taking a look at the consequences of the civil war, most importantly on people but also on the politics of the region.

I don’t want to plot the path of the war so much (though there will inevitably be a bit of that), rather I want to focus on the nature of it, its characteristics, so that we can better understand its significance today.

For a very brief period, Bashar seemed to offer a liberal regime but he soon revived the authoritarian tactics of his late father’s administration. It would eventually lead to protests, that became an uprising or a revolution, and eventually a civil war; and that’s what our focus is for this episode.

Hafez Assad moved Syria ever closer to the Soviet Union (and then lost it). And he set out to position Syria as a regional power and himself as the leader of the Arab world, filling the vacuum left by Nasser, and that meant taking on Israel (or at least at first it did), it also meant rivalry with Saddam Hussein, and, as we have seen, it meant interfering in the Lebanon Civil War and, indeed, its occupation of Lebanon (so I won’t revisit that). But all this also meant that, one way or another, whether he wanted it or not, there would be a relationship with America.

The good, the bad and the downright ugly side of Hafez Assad's rule.