What Do Syria's Rebels Want From The West?" While most people in our sample have favorable views of Turkey (78 percent) and Saudi Arabia (78 percent) and unfavorable views of Russia (91 percent) and Iran (92 percent), the public is divided on its support for the West."
I think this is the most reliable result in the survey. When the Assad government started killing a lot of people in 2012, the divide between the way Syrians felt, with deep hatred for the Russians and Iranians and gratitude for those that showed support for them, and the left, which continued to see the US as the real threat in the situation. When 65 percent strongly believe that Western powers deserve blame for the protracted conflict, it isn't because they've helped too much.
On the question of democracy, the time taken to complete the survey is important. Last year, when the only supporters of the Syrian revolution seemed to be those in the Gulf, the Front issued an Islamic charter that seemed to reject representative democracy. Now that it appears that such policies act as propaganda for Assad, and lessen the chance that the US would allow any proper weaponry to get through, they have issued a much more democratic covenant. I don't see this as cynicism, though a dose of that is good for anyone fighting a war against terrible odds, but as a sign that people change with the political landscape, and the sooner Syria achieves freedom the more likely armed groups are to follow the will of the population as regards the future political set-up rather than the other way round. This is also a simpler way of viewing the conflict, rather than asking who are the rebels, asking who they are fighting.