Refugee Crisis: International divide over Bashar al-Assad means no solution in sight

While the desperate flight of Syrians from their country’s war was dominating news bulletins, yet another diplomatic push to end the four-year-old conflict was quietly running into the sand.

That largely unnoticed failure has reinforced the view among Syria experts that no solution is in sight, with one of the biggest obstacles a seemingly unbridgeable international divide over president Bashar al-Assad’s future.

Syria looks set for ever greater fragmentation into a patchwork of territories, one of them the diminishing Damascus-based state where Assad appears confident of survival with backing from Russian and Iranian allies.