ALREADY on its knees, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad took another body blow on Wednesday. The assassination of three of the regime’s top security advisers, including the defence minister, occurred in the heart of the capital and highlighted the continued shrinkage of the area under Baathist control. On Wednesday also, 600 more Syrians, including two brigadier generals, crossed over to Turkey, thus adding to the ranks of the Free Syrian Army. With fighting no longer confined to the provinces — helicopters and artillery are shelling parts of Damascus — there are rumours that President Assad’s whereabouts are not known. There is no doubt the 17-month-old uprising has now turned into a ferocious civil war, with the opposition claiming 17,000 fatalities. After Libya, this is the highest death toll for an ‘Arab spring’ country.

President Assad missed the bus in April when he accepted Kofi Annan’s six-point plan only to renege on it. The plan had provided for a ceasefire and smooth transition to democracy. The caretaker cabinet proposal, too, is dead. Even Russia had agreed to a neutral cabinet in which there would be men from both sides. But President Assad’s intransigence scuttled it when he insisted that he should be part of it. This was not acceptable to the opposition. Fissures in the security establishment have now been so widened and the loyalist ranks so weakened that Assad is pulling troops out of the Golan Heights to bolster security around him. The world has watched the fate of the four Arab dictators who have fallen. It is now for President Assad to decide whether he would choose to seek a Saleh-like amnesty and go abroad or suffer a worse fate. If his regime falls, there could be repercussions in the region. The causes of the uprising are not sectarian, but the fact that the Alawite minority has been ruling for four decades may give a sectarian touch to the aftermath. If there is a sectarian flare-up, there could be political fallout in neighbouring Lebanon. Iran would lose one of its allies and that would also affect Hezbollah and Hamas.