-- to the Assad regime. Which means the fighting will go on. Assad's forces are currently losing vital ground, particularly in the north along the Turkish border and in the Mediterranean northwest, homeland of the Assads' Alawite minority. The longer the fighting continues, the greater the risk of refugees from Syria - including Salafist infiltrators - spreading from the eastern Mediterranean down into the already volatile Gulf. According to some Whitehall analysts, this regional instability is strengthening the case for direct intervention by western powers, including the US and Britain. There is also realistic assessment that Syrian military regime's quite extensive stocks of chemical and exotic weapons could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, the powerful pro-Iranian Shia militia based in Lebanon and Syria. In the past, Hezbollah armourers have shown great skill in improvising new weaponry, including short and medium-range rockets. But any international intervention, however limited in scale, aim, and duration, should carry the health warning of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is very hard to discern what sort of civil and peaceable regime could be established in Damascus now -- and the dread notion among diplomats is that Syria could become a kind of Somalia at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. As Colin Powell said of Iraq, once you break a thing, you own it. The legacy of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan led by the Bush-Blair duopoly is continuing chaos and uncertainty that is set to persist in both countries. David Cameron seems to have caught