Originally Posted by CrowBat View Post
In dumbest terms coming to my mind...

Let's say Oblabla and... well, any other Western politician not corrupted by Gazprom and similar Russian 'interests'... (Hollande appears a good example)... manage to convince Putler and that wannabe-Ayatollah Khamenei to get Assad out of Damascus...

...and Assad leaves, say, 5 minutes after the moment you've read this post of mine...

...what would that change on the battlefields of Syria?

Would the fighting end?

I strongly doubt this.

Hand at heart: the story about 'chaos without Assad', supposedly because of a break-down of 'civil order' in what was left of Syria under his control - as propagated by Oblabla - is nonsense. Syria (that is: the 30% of country still under supposed control of the regime) is already now a complete chaos. It is bankrupt since November 2011 and surviving only thanks to extensive financial support from Tehran.

Tehran has bankrupted itself 'thanks' to spending about US$50 billion in Syria of the last four years - and is currently surviving only thanks to loans from China, made possible by... surprise, surprise... Daesh advance into northern Iraq, in summer of last year....

Aw... I'm going off-topic now...

Anyway: Syria is ruined. Infra-structure is in tatters; most of major cities completely ruined. Industry is demolished. Agroculture sector ruined by war and successive draughts. There is already now no civil order, but 'organized chaos' run by various quasi-pro-Assad militias - foremost the IRGC-QF, which can't think about anything else but bolstering arsenals of Hezbollah/Lebanon and developing an even large force of Hezbollah/Syria, accompanied by construction of Shi'a religious schools and all the related indoctrination...

But OK. Let's say Assad is gone and ask again: would that mean that various of his militias (usually called 'Syrian Arab Army' or 'Syrian Armed Forces' by our glorious media) would stop fighting?

I would say: no way.

Reasons (roughly, quite roughly):
- a) 30% of these militias are Alawis, who are not only sternously convinced they are better than all the others there, but have so much blood and terror on their hands (not only from 40 years of their dictatorship but also four years of war in which they have destroyed the country) that at least half of them would end on various courts for war criminals - if not right in front of some execution squad.

- b) 10% are Syrian Sunni Nazis (more specifically 'Syrian Socialist National Party'), who think of themselves in terms German Nazis thought of themselves in the 1930s and 1940s.

- c) 10% are Syrian Sunni Ba'athists (and, sigh, hope I need not explaining how Ba'athists think of themselves).

- d) 35% are various Iraqi Shi'a Jihadists recruited by the IRGC (i.e. 'Hezbollah/Iraq'), then the IRGC-recruited Hezbollah/Syria, and Hezbollah/Lebanon, plus mercenaries from Afghanistan, Pakistan and wherever else...

- e) 5% are Palestinians (predominantly Palestinian Christians), that is kids of Palestinian refugees that grew up in Syria and have little other choice but to side with Assad, and various foreign volunteers organized as the 'Arab National Guard';

- f) 5% are Syrian Christians who were dumb enough to side with Assad (well, there is no doubt that emergence of the JAN, Daesh and similar idiots helped them in this decision); and

- g) 5% are Syrian Druze, who were stupid enough to side with Assad (supposedly for their own interests, but actually in order to be used as Assad's show-fight against the Daesh, primarily in Dayr az-Zawr area).

What sane person thinks anybody could bring any semblance of an order into this chaos alone? Not even the IRGC can control all of this (not to talk about Assad), but somebody thinks some sort of 'international agreement' - could?

And, how can anybody think he/she could bring an order into a chaos of about 2,000 'registered' armed opposition groups fighting against the above-mentioned conglomerate?

And then - a question which is ah-so-overimportant for the West: what's with Daesh? How shall anybody bring them under control?

Even if, say, there is a multi-national coalition that launches an all-out invasion of that pseudo-state: what shall we do with all of these idiots once they are defeated? Slaughter them to the last combatant, wife and kid? Forcefully convert them...? or convince them to convert... and to what...?

I'm really sorry, and be sure: I really mean no offense to anybody.

But, my conclusion - which appears 'unavoidable' to me - is that anybody thinking some sort of 'diplomatic solution' to this conflict is possible, is daydreaming.

(Note: which shouldn't mean that I think that any kind of military solution is possible, either. It is simply too late. So, grab yourself a bag of popcorn, some beer, and watch - as long as you still can.)