The violence in Syria, which has gone on for so long and taken so many forms of inhumanity, shapes everything it touches. Like other protracted civil wars, Syria's sectarian and political violence has created and entrenched divisions that didn't previously have the same salience. No matter how many noble plans for transitional justice and post-Assad reconciliation are crafted, it is difficult to imagine that Syrians will move past this cruelty and horror any time soon. And the sectarian imagery travels far beyond Syria's borders, heightening Sunni-Shia hostility and suspicion across the entire region in profoundly dangerous ways.
The Syrian war has also created an opening for al Qaeda and jihadist trends, which earlier Arab uprisings did not. While the early days of peaceful change in other Arab countries provided a potent challenge to al Qaeda's ideology, Syria's violence offered a nearly perfect arena for the revival of global jihad. It is now a failed state, where Gulf states are all too eager to pour funding into a jihad in support of a Sunni population fighting an "apostate" regime.
The rise of jihadist groups in Syria is not due to Western non-intervention -- in fact, the presence of Western troops in an Arab country has typically been more of an attraction than a deterrent for such movements. They have simply been attracted by the best vehicle since Iraq for salafi-jihadist global mobilization.
The resilience of Assad's regime also graphically demonstrated the possibility of less happy outcomes than in Egypt and Tunisia. Arab citizens who conquered the barrier of fear to join in mass protests against entrenched dictatorships in 2011 now have a raw, fresh example of the risks they face. Jordanians who might otherwise have joined in a growing protest movement may have held back when contemplating the horrors in Syria. Such a lesson is probably not unwelcome in the palaces of the Gulf, or other Arab countries that have thus far avoided uprisings.
Syria also helped to dispel the intoxicating sense of an Arab public coming together to confront its despotic leaders. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were unifying moments, not only in those countries but across the region. Almost everywhere outside the palaces of worried leaders, Arabs joined in the moment of enthusiasm for political change. Such unity would of course fade in the coming months, as polarization between Islamists and their opponents tore apart the Egyptian and Tunisian political consensus. But in those early days it was surprisingly strong.
There was never such consensus in Syria, though. Assad had many defenders among the "resistance" axis, many of whom dismissed the popular uprising in Syria as a Western or Islamist conspiracy. Anyone who has engaged the Syria policy debate online will be painfully familiar with the intensity of those divisions and arguments. Those divisions have only intensified as the conflict has worsened. In the most recent Pew survey, for instance, most Arabs expressed disdain for Assad -- but large majorities opposed Western arming of Syrian rebels in every country polled except Jordan.
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