Syria and its ramifications

Wall Street Journal

Syria is becoming uninhabitable.

Russia has understood the lessons of the last decade and a half; that propping up a brutal dictator creates greater local stability than taking the lid off the latent sectarian hatreds and rivalries. The risk, however,  is that it becomes the target of terrorism.

The US on the other hand appears not to have learned that taking off that lid while still meddling in the region not only unleashes violent extremism, previously tamped down by totalitarian regimes, but that by not disengaging, it remains a convenient scapegoat for all sides and the threat of terrorism therefore remains.

With the Kurds making the most effective progress against ISIL in Iraq, it looks increasingly likely that both Iraq and Syria may soon cease to exist as countries, at least in their current form. They almost certainly will have to grant almost complete autonomy to the Kurds, and a sectarian partition or the remaining parts of both may be inevitable.