The continuing Syrian civil war has inflicted a huge unrelenting disaster on the people of that country. Bashar al-Assad may be tottering, but we still don’t know when he will go or how many more people will be added to the displaced and exiled before he does. Nor does getting rid of Assad, however desirable, necessarily mean that the disaster befalling Syria will end soon. Whatever the endless speculation, no one knows what a post-Assad Syria will look like and what warring peoples end up doing to each other. The UN, in any event, expects the numbers of internally displaced and refugees will increase enormously this coming year.

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