TODAYS MESOP SYRIA ANALYSIS & OUTLOOK

13-3-2014 : “If power and force alone are what shape foreign policy, then so be it, in Syria as in Crimea. Let’s stop wasting our time by evoking international law and principles in a world that seems so little disposed to ensuring they prevail or, worse, that cites international law as an excuse to avoid taking any humanitarian action whatsoever,” writes Michael Young in Lebanon’s Daily Star Lebanon.

“The regime’s political goals are to remain in power, restore its control over as much of Syria as it can, and render the political opposition an irrelevant exile movement. Its military goal is to reduce the armed opposition to a manageable terrorist threat. This does not imply that the opposition has to be completely eliminated or that every inch of lost ground has to be recovered. Yet the regime has never shown any intention other than to fight, and it fights essentially everywhere in Syria. It does not negotiate with the opposition, and it does not give up on any province,” writes Jeffrey White of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“Today, Syria, as we once knew it, is gone: a third of the population is displaced, over a million homes have been destroyed, and over 100,000 people are dead. Spring is no longer a season to celebrate rebirth. It is a season to mourn the death of a country’s dream. Over the past three years, the Syrian people’s struggle for self-determination has been called many names. But no matter the name, revolution, uprising, civil war, proxy war, complicated conflict, one fact is clear: the world has been watching genocide in slow motion,” writes Lina Sergie Attar in the New York Times.