Why was Assad so violent?

As an Alawite, the prospect of losing power was a prospect of losing everything

“Assad is finished. What seems left to discover is how much time will be required before he is either killed or flees”. Steve Coll, writing in the New Yorker, July 2012

In December 2013 I was interested in the fact that Bashar Al-Assad was still in power in Syria, more than a year after many people had predicted his…