CAIRO — The ominous backdrop of civil war in Syria has exposed a Sunni-Shia sectarian fault line that was trembling at the summit of Islamic nations, which came to a close Thursday.

The crisis in Syria, observers here said, has become a kind of proxy war in the Sunni-Shia divide.

It was clear at the two-day summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that Iran’s Shiite theocracy is unwavering in its support of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Led by an Alawite minority that is considered an offshoot of Shiite Islam, Assad’s regime stepped up its pounding of the opposition, even as the delegates of the 52-nation regional organization were convening.

Meanwhile, the predominantly Sunni nations of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that attended the summit made it clear they were putting their regional clout and their petro dollars behind the still ill-defined Syrian rebel forces, which are suffering enormous casualties in a war that has already claimed 60,000 lives.

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Born of an Arab Spring-inspired desire for greater democracy, experts say that powerful geopolitical forces are now driving the war, with implications across the Middle East.

For an explanation of how the conflict is morphing into a proxy war, and how sectarian rivalries are fueling the violence, GlobalPost turned to Marius Deeb, Professorial Lecturer in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Professor Deeb is a Syria expert and the author of Syria’s Terrorist War on Lebanon.

This interview has been condensed and edited by GlobalPost.

Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab, who departed from the Syrian government yesterday, is a Sunni Muslim — one of several high profile Sunnis who have split with the regime recently. Is there growing evidence of a sectarian divide in Bashar Al-Assad’s government? More broadly, early on Syria’s conflict was a struggle for liberty. Has that changed?

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