Syria's crisis is now a year old, with close to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, dead — and no end in sight. The country is at a stalemate: The opposition is unable to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, and Assad's forces are unable to quash the resistance.
Both sides are adamant: The opposition is determined to bring down a regime that it views as illegitimate, sectarian, corrupt, tyrannical and stained with blood, while the regime's hardline core believes that, by persevering, it will ultimately silence the opposition, whereas any concession would jeopardize its very existence. Its downfall, they believe, would mean dispossession and death for the regime's leadership and for a large part of the minority Alawite community from which it is drawn.
Assad and his cohorts are encouraged by the world's failure to respond effectively to their brutal suppression of the revolt in Homs, and have proceeded to inflict vicious punishment on its survivors as a warning to opponents elsewhere.