The War To Topple Syrian Dictator Bashar Assad From Within Has Failed

Image courtesy of Reuters/Yazan Homsy

Assad May Have Won The Civil War -- Mona Alami, Osama Abu Zeid and Elizabeth Parker Magyar, Special for USA TODAY

AMMAN, Jordan — The rebel abandonment of Homs, a city known as the "capital of the "revolution," is the strongest sign yet that the dream of toppling Syrian dictator Bashar Assad from within has failed.

"We were under siege for so long," said rebel Orhan Ghazi. "The people of Homs have begun to move away from thinking about the revolution. They want to live, and that's it."

Assad is running for re-election June 3 for a job in which he is the only real candidate at a time when the Sunni rebels who have fought his regime for three years are severely weakened by losses in what were once their strongholds.

Last week, green buses full of armed rebels snaked their way through the ruins of Homs, a rebel bastion that had been pounded from the air by Assad forces relentlessly since May 2011. Rebels had withstood shelling and snipers, a cutoff of water and electricity, and the obliteration of their neighborhoods one after the other.

Hemmed into the Old Quarter of the city, the anti-Assad fighters had no choice but retreat.

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Update: Syria: Implications of the retreat from Hom -- Rodger Shanahan, The Interpreter

My Comment: Too many people have been killed/brutalized/wounded for this civil war to end quickly. It is a conflict that will now continue for a few more years ... if not longer.