As the New Year draws closer, the predictions of the fortune-tellers abound. These fortune-tellers must be really cautious and revisit most of their predictions after having sustained a major blow by the Mayan civilization, which ended more than a thousand years ago, and whose predictions ended up with the safety and survival of the planet and human kind. However, some of the prominent fortune-tellers insist on their predictions without minding the facts, the variables and the evolution of the world and knowledge. Such fortune-tellers include Russian President Putin, whose prediction skills are limited to the Syrian map and future with a strong focus on the marine base in Tartous. In his predictions for the New Year, Vladimir Vladimirovitch [Putin] warned against the “flipping of the roles" in Syria between the Authority and the opposition in the event of an “unconstitutional toppling" of Bashar al-Assad, which will lead to extending the fight for long years without having any winners. But the Russian fortune-teller is forgetting that the killer in both roles is Bashar al-Assad, who is a killer in the Authority and a killer in the “opposition." Putin is also forgetting that he is the one who is encouraging this situation by insisting on the persistence of a president who was rejected by the people; and that, by continuously arming the ruler of Damascus and protecting him in the international forums, he is encouraging the reiteration of the Lebanese, Iraqi, and Somali experiences – that he is warning against – on the Syrian lands. Putin is exploiting the West's fear from radicalism and the radicals, especially that the Syrian situation has turned into a domestic affair in the western countries, one that is prone to political bargains and discussions. However, these fears do not justify the western failure to resolve the Syrians' and their neighbours' suffering. No external power is to interfere directly in the ongoing conflict. However, there is a need to correct the military power imbalance, which has allowed Al-Assad to remain in power for this long. This is to be achieved by supplying the opposition with the necessary weapons to confront the army. The western failure to act seems like a reiteration of the mistake that was made during the Kuwait liberation war when the allied forces suddenly fell short from toppling the Saddam Hussein regime because the internal Iraqi affairs were not part of the western alliance's agenda and also because the western countries thought back then that their military strike had paved the way for the Iraqi opposition to topple the regime. They however discovered later on that, through his oppressive methods, Saddam was able to maintain power for long years and that overthrowing him would come at a hefty price. The same goes for the regime of Al-Assad today. Although the Syrian opposition has achieved and is still achieving a major progress on the ground, this has so far been insufficient to cause the collapse of the regime because the Iranian and Russian “pipes" are still supplying it with life support. The mission of international and Arab envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has failed. During his latest visit to Damascus, Brahimi concluded that the Syrian president is not ready to negotiate or accept any interim phase. Thus, there is an urgent need for the west to activate the Syrian opposition's fighting abilities. Anyone who saw the images of the massacre committed by Al-Assad's air force in Halafaya at the Hama region during the bombardment of a bakery must be wondering about the extent to which the Damascus regime will go before the world's conscience wakes up and refutes Putin's predictions.
