The Arab Spring has brought about only death and devastation in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have fled to the neighbouring countries are undergoing untold hardships. In refugee camps Syrian women and girls as young as 14 years are being forced into prostitution. The armed conflict has left over 60,000 dead, according to media reports. The oil production which stood at 380,000 barrels per day before the outbreak of the conflict in that country has crashed to a mere 20,000 bpd due to fierce fighting and a western embargo. The worst affected are the ordinary people faced with a double whammy—a death dealing conflict and abject deprivation.

The western governments and their Syrian foot soldiers have met their match in Assad, who has proved to be a hard nut to crack. He has been able to turn the tables on the rebel forces who had remained very confident, until a few months ago, of marching on Damascus, not so much owing to his military prowess but thanks to help from the countries opposed to western neo-colonialism.

Those who may have thought that the disintegration of the Soviet Union marked the end of the bipolar world with the US becoming the sole super power stand corrected. All signs are that Russia under Putin has regained its lost power as a countervailing force against the US and its allies; the frozen Cold War has manifestly thawed and entered a new phase with the US and Russia discussing Syria in Switzerland, though it was thought at the beginning of the Syrian conflict that ousting Assad would be a cakewalk for the western-backed militias.

The Syrian army backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah wrested control of a strategic border town the other day, making the rebel forces flee. The anti-Assad forces made a fundamental mistake by provoking Hezbollah fighters into playing a game-changing role in the conflict. The kneejerk reaction of the western governments to the humiliating battlefield setback has been to consider lifting the arms embargo on the rebel forces and accuse the Syrian forces of carrying out chemical attacks. Beleaguered President Assad would resort to anything to avoid Gaddafi’s fate, but the western governments cannot be expected to tell us the truth; they used similar allegations to justify their invasion of Iraq.

What is being fought in Syria is no longer Syria’s war, paradoxical as it may sound. It is a proxy war fought by two power blocs led by the US and Russia with their allies, far and near, rallying behind them. President Assad will be beholden to the Hezbollah fighters more than ever. The ground situation is still fluid in Syria and which way the conflict will turn is difficult to predict as the rebel forces are sure to unveil new capabilities with the help of their western handlers in time to come. But, their biggest handicap will be the manpower shortage they are experiencing vis-à-vis the active involvement of the heavily armed, highly motivated Hezbollah fighters who have already inducted over 4,000 battle-hardened cadres in Syria to shore up Assad’s forces.

Unless an immediate ceasefire is declared with the US and Russia keeping the Syrian rebels and Assad’s forces respectively on a tight leash and an end to the conflict negotiated urgently, the proxy war in Syria is bound to snowball into a fully-blown sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in an extremely volatile region. But, it is unlikely that Assad will agree to peace talks scheduled for July because following Wednesday’s victory he seems cocky that he is capable of wiping out the rebels. There seems to be no end in sight to the suffering of ordinary Syrians. That is the tragedy!