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This paper attempts to answer the question of why the war in Syria has been particularly long and violent. To do this, it draws upon the explanatory value of Benjamin Miller’s theory of regional war and peace (2007). The main claim here is that state weakness, a mismatch be- tween state boundaries and national identities, and great power competition in the area can explain why the war has been particularly long and violent. The study concludes that the fol- lowing major factors and their interacting effects have had a major role in protracting and ex- acerbating the war: weak Syrian nationalism; extreme Islamism; weakness of the Syrian state; competition between the West and Russia; and to a lesser extent, Kurdish presence and acts of relative disengagement by the United States.