The crisis in Syria is slowly becoming a regional conflict

A couple of months ago I wrote a post on the deteriorating civil war that has been taking place in Syria for almost two years. I discussed the lack of action by the international community in bringing in a resolution to the conflict and since then, the situation in  Syria and the region in general have not been getting any better, and the issue of the many differences between all sides in the conflict have not being resolved.
Unfortunately in the last few months since my last post on this issue, there has been more civilian deaths (over 80, 000) and President Assad tightening his grip on power.

In the last few weeks the conflict has further escalated internally with suspicion that the Assad regime has been using chemical weapons against his own people, although this has not been confirmed. The US and the UK intelligence agencies have stated that there is unconfirmed evidence that civilians have been attacked using nerve gas, but this has not led to further action by either country to remove Assad. Externally, the surrounding regions are slowly being sucked into the conflict, either on purpose or because they share a common border with Syria. On 11th of May for example, Turkey suffered a spate of bomb attacks in a town close to the border with Syria, for which the Turkish authorities blamed on the Assad regime. Also, only in the last days, Israeli defence forces have retaliated to gunfire from Syrian Army units in the Golan Heights. This incident comes in conjunction with Israeli air strikes on a  convoy, suspected of sending weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

From these events over the last few months, as the conflict in Syria gets worse, peace does not seem a likely outcome any moment soon. The international community keeps arguing that their hands are tied due to differences in how to solve the problems, and most nations are unwilling to risk a military intervention at this point.

The world needs to realise that the conflict is not just an internal affair any more, as the last few weeks have shown, Turkey, Israel and other countries in the region have been caught up in the politics of the civil war, and have at this stage refrained from escalating the situation, although, this could change if they are further provoked by the Assad regime and could turn into a regional war, if not resolved soon.