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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Simon Tisdall

The world failed to save Syria. Now its people must be free to chart their own path

A man draped in the Syrian flag watches a crowd celebrating the end of the Assad regime in Aleppo last week
Syrians celebrate the end of the Assad regime in Aleppo last week. Photograph: Juma Mohammad/ImagesLive/Zuma/Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

United in duplicity, if nothing else, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the US – key external players in Syria’s long-running drama – all agreed. The country’s “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity” must be respected and maintained, each separately declared last week after Bashar al-Assad’s sudden, welcome downfall.

Even Israel, recklessly bombing Syria to blazes in the Jewish state’s largest ever military operation, denied it was interfering in the country’s internal affairs. Such cynicism is breathtaking. Like ravening wolves, supposed friends and neighbours tug at the still twitching corpse of the deposed regime. Unchecked, they could tear Syria apart, again.

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