THE monstrous dictator has won. Bashar al-Assad has bombed, gassed and starved his enemies out of the biggest cities. He has made fools of Barack Obama and David Cameron, who said he should go but did nothing to bring his departure about. He has shrugged off the missiles that President Donald Trump fired at his bases.

Half a million people have died. Six million people are displaced within Syria; a similar number have fled abroad. Most of the refugees are Sunni Arabs, who made up most of Syria’s pre-war population of around 22m. Still more may be pushed out as Mr Assad moves to retake mostly Sunni rebel areas in the north and south-west of Syria. His state, meanwhile, is becoming more arrowly sectarian as Alawite (his sect), Shia and Christian minorities start to take over property abandoned by the fleeing Sunnis (see Continue reading
Leaders