The Syrian rebellion so far has been stretched out much like the Libyan rebellion before NATO intervention. Assad is exacting terrible punishments on the rebels with ruthless calculations and all the damage that political debacles and high level defections could have caused him have been mitigated by the state’s continuing military superiority. Unlike isolated, friendless Libya, Syria has powerful friends that it has cajoled/threatened to help it. And unlike Gaddafi, Assad has took a page out of Kim Jon-Ill’s book and publicly stated that he will use chemical weapons against the rebels if anyone from the outside world interferes.
So far Turkey seems to be preparing for a large confrontation with its neighbours, though the chances of an overt warfare are limited. Even covert support to the rebels is limited. Syrian generals that have defected to the rebellion claim that they have nothing more than the small arms and few pieces of heavy artillery they captured from the Syrian army. Long story short, on paper, they are in doomed. The one advantage they do have is morale and the spirit of revolution that west until recently so happily tried to hijack from the Arab Spring as their own invention. And one would like to hope that it sees them through as long as necessary.
