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Recalling the past week, two famous quotes spring to mind. Lenin is often credited with saying: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” (although whether the Russian revolutionary leader actually uttered these words is a matter of fierce debate). Less ambiguous is Ernest Hemingway’s line in The Sun Also Rises, where one of his characters is asked how he had gone bankrupt: “Gradually. And then suddenly,” came the reply.
And so to Syria. This time last week, rebel forces had taken the country’s second city of Aleppo, the strategically important city of Hama and were poised to sweep down on Homs. As regular contributor Scott Lucas, of University College Dublin, rather perspicaciously observed at that stage: “The Russia-Iran-Assad ‘axis of the vulnerable’ is cracking in Syria”.
