The evidence is clear. The Free Syrian Army is winning this war, and the Assad regime has been unable to reverse that trend in recent weeks....

Common knowledge and most expert analysts would suggest that the Assad regime is still extremely strong, and the fledgling insurgency, though surging, does not pose an immediate challenge to the regime. Assad continues to have support from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, as well as China, sections of the Syrian population such as most of the Alawite community, and most of his military. The regime has fairly advanced weapon systems capable of deterring any potential foreign intervention. The end is not near, and this conflict could last well beyond the end of the year.

However, the experts have been wrong before [1], and the evidence from the ground in Syria does not fit their predictions. The regime has lost several military installations, large areas of territorial control, several hundred soldiers to casualties and hundreds more to defections, and at least two helicopters and 40 armoured vehicles --- all in a single week. The Assad regime is like a sharpened pencil pushing on the rock of an insurgency: the harder it pushes, the more its strength crumbles.

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