ALEPPO, Syria — March 18, 2011, was an extraordinary day in the history of Syria; the demonstration demanding the release of “Al-Arbaeen School” students in the city of Daraa in south Syria turned into an uprising that swept across the country.

“It is your turn now, Doctor,” the students wrote on their school walls without knowing that this would lead to their arrest by Syrian security forces at a time when Tunisia, Libya and Egypt were putting an end to the era of dictatorships amid what was known as the “Arab Spring.”

While protesters were only demanding freedom and some reforms, it was not long before they started calling for the toppling of the regime and its security apparatus.

Today, four years into the Syrian revolution, the scenario is not what protesters had wished for. The country is divided into four states — the Kurds’ state, the revolutionaries’ state, President Bashar al-Assad’s state and the the Islamic State's (IS) state — while regional forces such as Iran, Turkey and others act as a main engine in the war. Several rebel factions and groups have emerged under several names, such as the Levant Front or Jabhat al-Shamiyya, the Free Syrian Army  (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusra, while Assad is still clinging to the presidency although some neighborhoods in the capital, Damascus, have spun out of his control.