there was an entire book on this but it boils down fundamentally to people not identifying with the state, but their tribes a kurd only cares about kurds, sunnis and shia only care about other shia. the borders themselves were almost entirely arbitrarily put there, which is why they seem to not matter when these constant rebellions happen so there's a lack of uniform identity as "syrians", the people in the syrian army aren't willing to die for the mere concept of syria which they see as some kind of out-of-scope governence that means nothing to them
Australia