Daesh on Friday launched another one of its deadly attacks on the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, leaving 30 dead including civilians, Syrian government fighters and opposition rebels. The Syrian conflict has raged on for the last six years and is amongst the most prolonged conflicts of the Middle East in terms of its length. In terms of being a human refugee crisis, a human rights disaster, lives lost and infrastructure collapse, it is amongst the most sorrowful of tragedies to have come down on the human race in Iraq and Syria. The world has debated over the possible solutions to this conflict, with both Russia and the United States investing a lot of time and effort to come to a resolution of this conundrum. The United States in the first few years of this conflict had backed the Syrian rebels against Bashar-ul-Assad, the still incumbent Syrian President. However, with the arrival of Russia in the conflict, who had Assad’s back, was a turning point in the whole saga. For a moment, it seemed like it was Afghanistan of 1980s all over again, with both Russia and the US pitted against each other, albeit this time, Russia too operating behind a proxy of its own. However, the US retreated as both Iran and Russia came out all guns blazing in support of Assad. Militarily speaking, Assad was in a better position than Gaddafi with respect to his rebels. If it were not for Russia and Iran supporting Assad, the US might have gotten what it coveted, the ouster of Assad and his replacement with a US friendly government. This time however, the narrative was on Russia’s and Iran’s side as the US had failed miserably in the case of Libya and it had failed to elicit much support in its intentions for Syria, as the more pressing problem of Daesh was at hand. Russia and Iran argued that Assad was the international powers’ best shot at fighting IS in Syria, whereas, the US thought that training and equipping the Syrian rebels was a better bet against Daesh. Thousands of military strikes and dozens of failed maneuvers later, it has buoyed to the surface that Daesh is still bustling. Not only that, the situation has deteriorated to the point that whole cities such as Aleppo face acute food shortages in addition to the already rampant medical treatment shortage for the injured. Each day, images of starving children emerge on the social media and so do cries for help by the Syrian people. The real problem has been that all the world powers have failed to take stock of the ground realities in the area. While the far-fetched notion of a US-Russia team up for resolution of the conflict is becoming increasingly likely, given the love affair between the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the upcoming US President Donald Trump, it is still doubtful if dropping more bombs on the ground is going to be the aspirin for this conflict. If war were to solve this issue, it would have been solved years ago. The ground reality is that not even a political deal agreed to in the great halls of the UN General Assembly or extravagant hotels in the Europe is a possible solution to this conflict. Truce has to be negotiated by the opposition rebels and the Syrian military on the ground. Only then could decisive action be taken against Daesh. *