if you listen to Ritter, Crooke and others, it would appear that after the temporary winning of the civil war, Assad basically was no longer in control. Rampant corruption in politics and the military feathering their own nest, and likely taking kickback from wealthy Arab states to look the other way, or down tools, he really had no room to manoeuvre or fight. Add to his personal failings and the serious illness of his wife, he preferred to not hang from a rope like Saddam and fled to Russia. His rule was despotic and cruel, inflicting misery on his citizens, helped of course by the US and the West with the cruel sanctions placed on them. and it's good he's no longer there, but who or what is replacing him. A cruel and despotic and religiously extreme Moslem gang of thugs and murderers.

It's likely the country will split apart, Kurdish areas and the US, Turkish areas, and Israeli areas.

It's the end too of any thought of nationhood for the Palestinians. Without any effective opposition to Israel, they will have to move on somewhere, or accept the status of non-entities in Israel, and Gaza will get Jarod's condominiums along the Gazan shores of the Mediterranean and settlers their fortified towns in the west bank.

Greater Israel was born in this collapse of Syria, from the river to the sea - they've won, the US has won, evil and murder has won. It happens, sadly. Until the US itself falls over, and perhaps the Arab states too, then some retribution might arise. And the Palestinians, will be conveniently forgotten by the rest of the world, in a couple of generations it'll be as they never existed. And I will eventually give up attending my weekly vigil for them and absolve my conscience by contributing to Medicine sans Frontiers etc.