sectarian

Mr. Sharaa has also continued to host extremist foreign fighters, appointing several to senior positions within the military and rewarding them with army divisions, despite their implication in sectarian killings.

Syrian and international monitoring groups reported sectarian massacres, in which entire families were killed by government forces, armed groups allied with the government and armed volunteers, including summary executions.

It held relatively free and fair elections in the past and doesn’t suffer from the types of sectarian rifts associated with states in the Middle East.

"The same neural signature -- reward up, control down under rivalry -- likely generalizes beyond sport to political and sectarian conflicts."

Three decades of sectarian violence over British rule in Northern Ireland led to the deaths of 3,500 people until a peace deal was signed in 1998.