Oh Syria is far more complicated than my limited understanding P with so many sides having their fingers in that pie that I don't think anyone really knows what is going on. It is no wonder the people are getting out, they are merely the meat between the sandwich in one almighty screw up. But the Saudis are at the route of it along with a couple of the smaller gulf states, and there is oil involved in it too of course, before the war there was some kerfuffle over whether Assad was going to opt for Russian backed pipelines or US ones, he chose to go with Russia and the rest is a mess.
But the mainstream press are hopeless at providing any worthwhile information in this, between the vested interests of their own governments in the war, their own political leanings, their fixation with Islam as the source of all evil, their ignorant assumption that this is a religious war rather than political and that every ME country is a cultural and religious carbon copy of Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia it is no wonder that we are all confused. To find anything substantial one has to go off the beaten path.