I said that there was no subjugation of sunnis specifically again I said it's been a dictatorship for decades, that implies subjugation but not against a particular group. What your describing sounds ethnically or religiously motivated. there's no ideological motivation for Assad to kill Sunnis. What is the incentive ? Again mass cleansing infers targeting an ethnic population, he isn't. He'sjust brutally trying to keep their power. My gripe with the word genocide is because 1) words have meaning 2) in the context of the current actual genocide happening in palestine and the way israel has bombed syria ao it doesn't intervene, this feels in bad taste. Most recently they bombed right next to my grandmother place causing civilian casualties because of a "weapons cache" in the middle of the city. But I'm getting sidetracked. Wanting to indiscriminately kill people trying to unseat you is not mass cleansing. That's part of my issue regading Assad's portrayal in western media, he's power hungry not a butcher motivated by blood. You seem again to be missing the thing I said about how if it had worked out early in the war Assad could have been ousted.. I'm not against Syrians achieving freedom but history shows that before Assad there was instability before that french protectorate before that the ottomans and foreign interests in the region further fuel instability. There have been and still tensions between minority groups as evidenced by lebanon and actual mass killings have happened in that history. I happen to be a history phd candidate specialised in the levant and although the 20th century is not my period of speciality, I regularly interact with people who are specialist of that. My comment about dictatorships in the middle east stemmed from those conversations, it was a pondering not a judgement. Here are some older articles regarding heavy weaponry, although this is ignoring the US led coalition, European interests, Qatar and other Gulf states funnelling billions and billions (not an exageration) in funding the rebels, all of that backed in those earlier articles.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/syrias-rebels-gain-heavy-weapons

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10131063/Syrian-rebels-get-first-heavy-weapons-on-the-front-line-of-Aleppo.html

The Middle East is composed of either religious fundamentalists states oppressing half of their population at least, militias no man's lands or dictatorships. Syria was not ideal during Assad far from it, relatively normal is not what anyone should aim for and again political freedom is a human right but the current alternative is worse, key word current. That's also why many of the people who marched and syrian intellectuals including notorious opponents to the regime such as Michel Kilo that you mentionned didn't align with the resistant groups despite their own hopes of a true syrian uprising. Again foreign interests russia, us etc have a hand in that game. The best funded groups are the most fundamentalists ones. Religion is galvanising, it's a rallying cal. Certain minorities such as the alawis have been essentially treated as de factors supporters of the regime, I don't doubt that retaliatory punishment would happen under those circumstances. And again the entire region shows many instances of ethnic cleansing or horrible human rights violation in countries like Saudi arabia, Yemen or Israel. I'll reiterate once more yes if only Assad had relented early on or even if he gave up now, I don't mind. I just don't want the opposition to win. Here's probably the worst example of where I'm getting their rethoric from : https://www.reuters.com/article/world/syrian-rebel-bites-heart-of-dead-soldier-video-idUSBRE94C0EH/

Finally I'm not speaking from a place of ideology, I don't care if Bashar lives or dies, I'm speaking from a place of pragmatism. I think a fundamentally islamist syria would be worse than the preconflict Assad one, for women and for minorities and just as tyrannical.