Syria Conflict: No End to Interminable War in Sight by Jeremy Bowen, BBC
… The war has not been contained, and continues to get worse, and more complicated. Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, has the toughest diplomatic job in the world.
The most powerful rebel groups taking on the Assad regime have ideologies that range from a kind of religious nationalism, to the jihadists of Islamic State who are hacking off parts of Syria and Iraq to make a new kind of political entity.
The rebel groups often fight each other. They reconstitute coalitions and organisations frequently. The rebels approved and funded by the West are not big players.
What makes things really complicated is that big regional and world powers have also intervened on either side in the war…
Comments
Not so sure the article is actually current--right now Assad only controls less than 15% of the entire country. The rest is divided into say the Kurdish controlled zone, the IS controlled zone and the other anti-Assad secular and Salafist grouping zones with they tackling IS on a daily basis.
IS is taking the approach --we want a Caliphate, the Kurds we want a homeland and the anti-Assad and Salafists are taking the approach we are defending Syria from foreigners ie the Iranians. AND the KSA, Qatar and the UAE are taking the approach--we are defending a Sunni nation against the regional Shia hegemon Iran.
The Iranians are supporting Assad and are attempting to maintain a land corridor between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Russians would not have entered into Syria under whatever lie unless they truly felt the Assad ship is in the midst of sinking.
Assad and the current Assad government or what is left of it---is on a short timeline of existence.
This disagrees with the article.
A more interesting direction would be has Russia been pushed into being the proxy for Iran in Syria?