Unending conflict

The course of war in Syria will go a long way to determining the wider Mena region’s fate in 2016

Five years on from the uprising in the southwestern town of Deraa that sparked the twenty-first century’s most brutal civil conflict, the Syrian crisis remains stubbornly immune to resolution. The human and financial cost of the conflict continue to spiral ever higher. The emergence of IS, parasitically gnawing on the carcass of the dishevelled Syrian state, caused a collective nervous breakdown across the region. Terrorism born in Syria has now extended its deadly reach to European capitals. Russia’s belated entry to the Syrian theatre has ratcheted up the tension level a notch higher, providing a lifeline for the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad while challenging the Gulf-