The Syrian stalemate is pushing the outside powers to find a workable compromise before it is too late to climb out of the abyss. Word from Lebanon and France is that the Russians are “seduced” by the Lebanese Taif Agreement which ended the civil war, and are interested in a Syrian Taif.
This is very bad news for Syria. The Taif Accords in Lebanon ended the military confrontation between the Lebanese through a confessional power-sharing formula among the different sects and stopped the war. But it did not offer the country a basis for a stable and workable democracy. It is a system that inherently recreates crises and keeps the country in a perpetual civil war.