On the second anniversary of the Syrian tragedy, certain emerging factors in the intensive, overspreading war are being consolidated overtime into becoming established patterns, thus drawing new parameters of the conflicts in Syria and over Syria.

First, the war will never end by a crushing defeat or surrender of either party. Indeed, the conflict is turning into a low-intensity war of attrition that will lead to more disintegration of the state apparatus and fragmentation of a socially rich and mosaic society.

Second, the war is becoming a mixture of insurgency warfare, civil war, war by proxy, as well as an international jihadist war attracting jihadists from all over, like the Iraq war and, before it, the Afghanistan war. Syria is more attractive for international jihadism than the Mali war due to the different dimensions of geopolitics and society.

Third, the increasing selective arming of the rebels, alongside the public diplomatic declaration by different capitals on providing arms, sends many messages.  One is that there is a need to establish a deterrence capacity for the rebels to neutralize as much as possible the qualitative superiority of the regime’s military forces. Another message suggests that there is no more possibility for a political solution, but only for a military one. Thus, it is a way of engaging in beefing up the military capacity of the rebels while trying to be sure that the arms go into the right hands for a long, liberation war.