So what happens now? Neither the Syrian rebels nor the Syrian government forces have the wherewithal right now to land a knockout punch against their opposite number. Unless there is something that is injected into the current equation — such as outside military intervention — that would create an imbalance of power on one side or the other, a stalemate of bloodletting and the disintegration of state and society will continue.

The new UN special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, has it right. His latest pessimistic report on Syria will not raise unrealistic expectations. The conflict has become so existential and militarized on both sides that no new diplomatic initiative stands a chance. He needs to develop relationships, assess a fluid political and military landscape and prepare for a time when a diplomatic initiative may be worth pursuing.

But that opportunity may not come anytime soon. The domestic, regional and international dimensions of the crisis have become more intertwined — and therefore more complicated and difficult to unravel without causing more harm than good. 

Syria has become a diplomatic and strategic battleground between the US and Russia, between Iran and its allies on one side and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey on the other, between Sunni Arabs in Syria against minority religious groups (primarily Alawites and Christians) in a conflict that is increasingly sectarian and finally, between different rebel factions along an array of fault lines. These factions include ex-pats/exiles outside of Syria versus those fighting and dying on the ground inside Syria, the more conservative Sunni Arabs (including small groups of Salafist al-Qaeda types) versus the more secular rebels and those who are militant about removing any vestiges of the regime versus those who still cling to the possibility of a negotiated solution — and mixed into all of this are decades-long personal antagonisms as well as the cancer of self-aggrandizing jockeying for post-Assad positions.