This paper presents a succinct, condensed narrative of the course of violence in Syria; how it began, intensified, and spread to become a war involving national, regional, and international actors. The paper starts with a reminder that the conflict in Syria has initially started as a peaceful people’s revolution, and that the violence was initiated by the Assad regime which later on, brought foreign allies, whose violence was the most widespread and most devastating. The paper differentiates between the groups that have subsequently used violence given the opportunity presented by the revolution and the war, and other parties and forces, completely, or nearly completely, sucked into violence as a self-defense mechanism in the face of the Assad regime’s and its allies extreme brutality.