It began in March 2011 with the suppression of peaceful protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and escalated into an all-out conflict that saw chemical weapons used on civilian populations. Now, after three years of fighting, no peaceful resolution is in sight for Syria's devastating civil war. What the UN negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi recently described as the "immense hope" that attended peace talks in Geneva came to nothing, and a violent stalemate continues in the country, where the death toll approaches 150,000. Meanwhile, any clear lines in the conflict have been blurred by outside interference on both the pro- and anti-regime sides, clashes between rebel factions and the incursion of jihadist groups. less