And so the savagery continues. UN Syrian peace envoy, Kofi Annan's Geneva peace conference, of which so much was hoped, came to nothing. If the reports before the meeting, that Moscow had changed tack were ever true, it is clear that the Russians reversed their view when it came to the actual talks. They were not prepared to accept any unity government, that would in effect, have seen the exclusion of Bashir Assad. It seems more likely that UN officials were briefing media in a desperate attempt to bounce Putin's administration into abandoning the Assad regime. If so, it was a forlorn and arguably foolish move. The Russian president is not a man to be bounced by anyone. So Moscow still stands front and center with the Syrian regime, backed, to their continuing discredit, by Beijing, and the slaughter goes on. Yesterday, troops appear to have completed a sweep through the Damascus dormitory towns of Zamalka and Douma, in the first of which a funeral procession was mortared on Saturday killing 40 mourners. The Free Syrian Army, still unable to match the regime's firepower, melted away, leaving the luckless inhabitants to the vicious attention of government forces and their murderous militia. Thanks to the continuing deliveries of Russian weaponry, the Syrian armed forces are not short of arms and ammunition. However, they may be weakening on another front - manpower. Defections, including those of senior commanders, continue. Last week's devastating attack on a pro-government TV station in Damascus is thought to have been carried out by defectors from the elite Republican Guard. Loyalist troops continue to take casualties at the hands of rebel fighters and they must now also have to be on guard against their comrades. Discipline is almost certainly having to be enforced with the utmost brutality. Even the most loyal soldier will think twice if a friend is taken out and shot summarily for even hesitating to carry out an order to assault fellow Syrians. Add to this, the feeling of exhaustion that many ordinary soldiers will be experiencing after 16 months of rising conflict. There has been little or no leave for months. As soon as a drive into rebel held areas is completed and troops withdraw, the rebels move back in. Any soldiers left behind to garrison outposts know the serious dangers they face. In such circumstances, even a well-trained and heavily armed force such as the Syrian army will be experiencing growing morale problems. Now Syria's military planners have a new threat to face. Since one of their warplanes was shot down in disputed circumstances on June 20, the Turkish armed forces have begun to concentrate on the Syrian border. Six fighters were scrambled on Sunday when Syrian attack helicopters approached the border. Ankara has warned that any movement of Syrian troops toward the frontier will be taken as an aggressive act. Turkey seems to be seeking to create a de facto buffer zone inside Syria itself. Does Damascus, with the strength and morale of its army slowly ebbing away, still have sufficient military resources to counter this?
