(CNN)It’s not easy to defuse a crisis complicated by tens of thousands of foreign fighters, many affiliated with ISIS, over 100,000 Iranian-sponsored militiamen, and the armies and intelligence agencies of myriad states. Nor can the horrific humanitarian crises plaguing many Syrian refugee and internally displaced persons camps, where aid gets siphoned off and manipulated by the Assad regime, be easily managed. One trembles to hear every few days of children freezing to death and parents burning themselves or killing their children out of humiliation, poverty, and hunger.
Score-settling between Iran and Israel, Turkey and the Gulf, and the US and Russia stands to come at an inestimable cost for Syrian civilians. As bad as that already is, the clashing is not limited to geopolitics. The first shots of the war over reconstruction spoils have already been fired; over time, their blasts could drown out even the din of Russia’s military assault on civilian-packed Idlib, already underway. Continue reading