Russia's role in the endgame

The sooner Russia, its key ally, realises this, the earlier hostilities can cease. The relationship with Syria has offered Moscow advantages that have outlasted the Cold War, but these are fast turning into liabilities.

The regime’s survival is now in doubt after nearly 17 months of increasingly deadly challenges by armed opposition groups. These forces have clearly demonstrated their effectiveness in reaching deep into Damascus. They carried out an audacious bombing there recently that killed three of Assad’s most senior officials, including the defence minister. The opposition has occupied parts of the capital and of the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s most important commercial centre. Government forces are likely to find it difficult to dislodge them.

With special international envoy Kofi Annan’s peace effort failing and the United Nations observer mission confined largely to hotels, the violence is likely to add more to the toll of 17,000 dead so far. There is another pressing reason for collective international intervention: the regime has betrayed a clear sign of desperation in moving its large arsenal of chemical weapons. The danger is that Assad, who has shown in recent months that he is even more ruthless than his late father, might order his fast disintegrating regime to use them, against not only foreign forces but also his own people. Even Russia has been forced to issue a public warning.

But Moscow has to do more. It should withdraw its support for Assad and open the way to bringing all parties to the negotiating table. The stakes for Syria and for the region are too high for Russia – and like-minded China – to continue vetoing UN Security Council resolutions.

Syria is a tinderbox with simply too many groups contending for supremacy. Clearly, the political stability that the Assads have brought for more than 40 years has ended. A tolerably orderly transition might still be possible if the regime gives up power as soon as possible. If it is left to collapse violently, the prospect is a further descent into chaos as centrifugal forces battle to fill the power vacuum.

It might become a bloodier version of the struggle for Syria immediately after independence in 1946. Ethnic, religious, regional and ideological divisions have re-emerged. Opportunistic outside terrorist groups have evidently also become engaged, sowing even more havoc. Russia should step up and join forces with other big powers, without further delay, to find a political solution and peaceful transition.