The battle for the border town of Qusair had all the ingredients of a total tragedy: thousands of civilians trapped without food or medicine; rebels resisting for two weeks against intense assaults, outnumbered and outgunned; the numbing realisation that the end result will not be a liberated Syria, but a divided one. The Sunni town stood incongruously between the Shia villages of northern Lebanon and Syria's Alawite heartland. It will, one fears, be incongruous no more, and nor will it remain Sunni.
There could be years of warfare to come. For while the fall of the town represents a hard blow for the rebels, it does not, of itself, constitute a turning point. It was Hezbollah's first victory since openly declaring its involvement in Syria, but the tenacity with which the Shia militia fought may have had more to do with the town's strategic location at the crossroads of arms coming in from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and the road to Homs. It remains to be seen whether Hezbollah devotes the same resources, and displays the same willingness to take heavy casualties, in Aleppo, which is where they are believed to be headed.
Second, this war has swung back and forth. Two months ago, the Syrian opposition leaders in Istanbul and Doha confidently predicted a final assault on Damascus. They were listened to because they were deemed to be in the ascendant. Today, the pendulum has swung back as Assad's forces have regrouped. But the strategic facts remain unchanged. Assad has lost most of his country. The northern border remains open, and while money from the Gulf states flows in and Syria remains awash with arms, large parts of the country will remain in rebel hands.
The pendulum may well swing back yet again, but what is fast disappearing in the process is the dream of a country united in liberation. Borders are disappearing as Sunnis vow to take the fight back to Hezbollah's doorstep in Lebanon. This is not because Selim Idriss, the chief of the Free Syrian Army, should be believed when he threatens to take the fight there. Command and control of the 800-odd militias which go under the title of a unified fighting force is at best an aspiration rather than a reality. It is because the conflict has become sectarian. When it finishes, there will be new enclaves and new borders.
Little surprise, then, that talks in Geneva yesterday between the US, Russia and the UN made no headway on a peace conference which now has little chance of starting next month. Still less surprise that these faint diplomatic efforts should be drowned out by statements from Britain and France that sarin nerve gas had been used in Syria, and one of President Barack Obama's red lines had been crossed. Whether it had been or not, both London and Paris should reflect on what credible alternative there now is to the diplomatic effort to bring all sides round a table at Geneva.
Forcing the end of the EU arms embargo makes little strategic sense. It is unlikely to change the balance of power between different rebel groups, as has been claimed. But it is certain to ensure that Assad's supplies of heavy weapons continue. S-300 anti-aircraft missiles are not the only arms in the Russian contract pipeline. Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu said that Moscow's "restraint" from sending offensive weapons to Syria, such as tactical missiles, combat jets and armour, may have to be "revised" in the light of the EU's decision.
Rearmament in Syria is not a game Britain and France can win. So, if the US is not prepared to intervene on the ground and the establishment of a no-fly zone would require a lengthy air war in itself, what is William Hague and Laurent Fabius's plan B should a peace conference fail to materialise? They have a duty to spell it out. Why would pouring fresh fuel on the fire incentivise any party to extinguish it? All efforts should go into preparing the best possible negotiating position for the Syrian rebels. At the moment, the rebel leadership refuses to unite and its negotiating position is getting worse by the month.
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