No wonder the history of Syria is replete with accounts of outsiders who fought one another, such as the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians and Romans. Like India, Syria suffered as much as it benefited from such foreign intruders.

But today, visuals of the death of helpless children in Syria must make one reflect on how to put an end to this bloodbath in what is essentially a battle of attrition.

Under the pretext of waging a holy war against ISIS, forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad in eastern Ghouta have perpetrated mass killings.

According to Amnesty International , “flagrant war crimes” are being committed in eastern Ghouta and on an “epic scale”.

A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding. In collusion with the Assad regime and Iran, eastern Ghouta, a cluster of concrete-block towns and farmland with an estimated population of nearly 400,000, has been reduced to pulverised rubble, dismembered bones, and dust mixed with blood.

The region is bearing the brunt because it happens to be one of the last bastions of the rebels fighting the Assad government. In response to the airstrikes, the rebels have shelled the government-held neighbourhood of Damascus.

Civilians, including helpless children, are just pawns in a bigger game of attrition.

The assault on Aleppo was mounted to chase the Syrian opposition forces to other areas, like the province of Idlib, which the Russians and Syrians have also bombarded.

The rebels who were thus hounded out have been largely exterminated in eastern Ghouta.

It has essentially been a choreographed game of manslaughter. It bears recall that eastern Ghouta had been attacked by chemical weapons in 2013.

Russia’s objective apparently was to control only the part inhabited by Assad’s supporters, who are by and large Muslim Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the one hand and the Shiite Muslims of Iran and Syria on the other are ranged between each other.

This has to be explained in terms of the compulsions of the energy war ~ to secure not only the European market but also the markets of South-east Asia given the energy requirements of China, India and Pakistan. Iran, rich both in oil and natural gas, has an edge over Saudi Arabia, rich only in oil, and Qatar, rich only in natural gas.

ISIS has also been used at cross-purposes because its presence and control of the eastern part of Syria and the western part of Iraq could effectively block the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, affecting the flow of Saudi oil and Qatari natural gas.

A strong neighbour like anti-Assad Turkey is beholden to pro-Assad Russia because it is dependent on the latter’s natural gas.

While the Saudis are turning to Egypt to cobble up an Arab alliance, the latter has moved closer to Russia after the Arab Spring.

It is peeved over the American acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a move supported by Turkey, Qatar and Iran.

The Iranian pipeline, should it materialise in its present form, will reduce both Turkey’s revenues and its geopolitical significance.

In fact, the proposed pipeline has been packaged as the largest gas pipeline in the Middle East; it will stretch from Iran’s gas-rich South Pars field to the Mediterranean coastline in Lebanon, via Iraq and Syria.

It also happens to be a major bone of contention. Syria has been at the centre through which Europe seeks to reduce its reliance on Russia, as 80 per cent of the gas that the Russian state-controlled company Gazprom produces is sold to Europe.

Russia’s involvement in the war in Syria is more out of concern of losing out to other US allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Russia had earlier gone to war in Georgia and Ukraine to disrupt plans to export gas from other parts of the Middle East.

Before the civil war, two competing pipelines, that were laid by Qatar and Iran, were meant to transport gas to Europe through Syria.

Though Qatar, the reservoir of the largest natural gasfield in the world, owns about two-third of the resource, it cannot capitalise on it fully because it relies on tankers to deliver it to other countries and this makes its gas more expensive than Russia’s.

Qatar’s plans, first put forward in 2009, to build a pipeline from the Persian Gulf via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, was opposed by Assad who had denied permission for the pipeline to run through his territory.

This might have been prompted by Russia, which was eager to safeguard its own business. Iran’s counter-plan, signed by Assad in 2012, had Russia’s blessings because it could use Iran against Qatar, a US ally hosting a US air base.

While an enraged Qatar is believed to have funded anti-Assad rebel groups by $3 billion between 2011 and 2013 alongside Saudi Arabia, Iran was believed to be helping Assad by running the Syrian army, supplying it with weapons and even troops.

So all the stakeholders ~ Russia, the US, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey ~ pretending to fight against ISIS or supporting or opposing Assad have vested interests and any pretension to fight a holy war is only for the birds.

The death of hapless children in Syria is the outcome of the internecine power struggle. Syria, one of the most heavyweight Middle Eastern allies of the Soviet Union during Hafiz al-Asad’s rule, formalised its alliance in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1980.

Saudi Arabia has been firmly entrenched under the United States’ security umbrella, and this can be traced to the time of World War II.

It had always been deeply distrustful of the Soviet Union and had been wary of the invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

Syria had stood by revolutionary Iran throughout the latter’s eight-year war against Iraq, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini openly invoked the masses to overthrow the Saudi monarchy.

As things stand, there is now a sharp competition between Russia and the US, almost reminiscent of the Cold War. This has been the major stumbling block towards peace in Syria.

And as the war in Afghanistan had less to do with the removal of the Taliban, the war in Syria has become a battlefield to secure access to sources of energy. It had begun as a concerted move to drive out ISIS.

To quote an old dictum, “There can be no [Arab-Israeli] war without Egypt, and no peace without Syria”. In Syria, various stakeholders are working at cross-purposes.

Russia’s main concern is to persuade the international community to allow Assad to remain in power. The United States and its allies are unsure and seem to be on shaky ground.

But the distressing reality is that Russia, Iran and Syria are not going to desist without suitable economic, military, and diplomatic pressure being exerted on the presidential palace in Damascus.

The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on politics, development and cultural issues.