More than two million people have now fled to neighbouring countries to escape Syria’s civil war.
Many are living in camps with little protection from the cold: temperatures in the Lebanese mountains fell well below freezing in the second half of December, though they have now risen a little.
Over one million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries are children, and more than 425,000 are under the age of five.
Within Syria, 6.5 million people are displaced.
Meanwhile, the killing in late December by a group linked to Al Qaeda of a Syrian rebel leader known as Abu Rayyan has trigged sharp conflict among different forces fighting the Assad regime.
Abu Rayyan was killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, sometimes ISIS), the official Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Many secular or softer-Islamist groups linked to the Free Syrian Army (which is supposed to be an umbrella organisation for the anti-Assad battle) have taken to the streets in protest against ISIL.
Protesters in Aleppo chanted: “Free Syrian Army forever! Crush ISIL and Assad”.
Many people think that ISIL’s attempts to impose ultra-strict Islamist codes only help Assad.
ISIL has attempted forced conversions to Islam amongst Christian Syrians and allegedly killed women for refusing to wear the veil. Many even among those who, longer-term, want an Islamist state in Syria, see such actions as compromising the fight against Assad, which they say is top priority
ISIL has responded to the threats to expel them from parts of Northern Syria by threatening to leave themselves and thus hand control over to Syrian Government forces. They have also shot and arrested other rebels in tit for tat attacks.
The Al-Nusra Front, which was previously allied with ISIL and Al Qaeda but now forms part of the Islamic Front, has attempted to stay neutral.
The increasing sectarian conflict within the opposition has been used by the Syrian Government to excuse itself from its commitments on deadlines for handing over its chemical weapons.
The Government’s collaboration with the Lebanese Shia militants Hezbollah has increased, and Assad has been helped by the first official pronouncement from a senior Shia cleric which endorses fighting alongside Syrian Government forces.
Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Kazim Al-Haeri has said: “The battle in Syria… is a battle of infidels against Islam and Islam should be defended. Fighting in Syria is legitimate and those who die are martyrs”.
The largely Sunni opposition, even though many of them reckon themselves Islamists, are branded as “infidels against Islam”.
The Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards have increased their activity in training Syrian Government forces, and estimated 5000 Iraqi Shia volunteers are currently in Syria fighting for Assad.
On 17 December a British doctor, Abbas Khan, an orthopaedic surgeon from South London, was reported dead “by suicide” by the Syrian government, which was holding him in jail.
Dr Khan had been arrested by the Syrian Government within 48 hours of arriving in Aleppo in November 2012. He was accused in a Syrian court of “acts of terrorism” - that is, treating wounded civilians caught up in the conflict.
He had made claims he had been tortured whilst imprisoned, and he weighed 32kg earlier this year when his mother was able to visit him. But at the point he died, he was due to be released from prison within days.
As his sister Sara said to the BBC; “Why would he take his own life when he was so excited to be coming home?”
The British Government has said it believes the Syrian state has effectively murdered Dr Khan and at best his death was “extremely suspicious”.
In early January five Médecins Sans Frontières staff were kidnapped. At this time it is not known whether rebels or the Syrian Government are responsible.
The left can back neither the rotten Assad Government and its Shia islamist backers, nor the Sunni Islamists who dominate the current opposition.
