The Wall Street Journal quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Senior Fellow Frederic C. Hof on the sense of hopelessness behind the surge of Syrian refugees escaping to Europe and the Middle East:
“These people have decided that Syria is finished,” said Frederic C. Hof, the former Obama administration envoy to the Syrian opposition and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “This is a consequence of Assad’s brutality against his own people, Assad opening up a vacuum that ISIL was able to fill—and the failure of the West to respond to any of this in a meaningful way.”