article: It also demonstrates the growing calamity in the country where the conflict moves from phase to phase, but shows no sign of ending. Perhaps at the outset it should be established what we know. There seems no doubt that a chemical incident occurred, and there were Syrian government air attacks in the area. The opposition of course has no air force. The West places the blame squarely on the Assad regime. Russia - one of President Assad's few allies - has a different story. It says an air attack hit a weapons dump, thus releasing the chemical agent. All of the Western experts on chemical warfare contacted by the BBC have been highly sceptical about the Russian claim. As yet there has been no clear analysis of samples from the location of the strike or from the victims. More information will undoubtedly become available. Reports of the first significant use of chemical weapons - including Sarin nerve agent - by the Assad regime in 2013, prompted the international community's first purposeful diplomatic intervention in the Syrian War. The Obama administration had marked down the use of chemical arms as "a red line", which, if crossed, would lead to serious consequences for the Assad regime. In the event, President Obama decided to pull back and avoid military action. The US and Russia came together and brokered a deal under which the Assad regime would give up its chemical arsenal under international inspection. The problem of chemical weapons in Syria appeared to have been resolved. But this was not so. Since then there have been sporadic reports of the further use of chemical weapons both by the Assad regime and so-called Islamic State. These have often involved the use of commercial chemicals like chlorine. But this latest use of what looks to be a nerve agent like Sarin, and the frightful images of the attack, have underscored just how little progress has been made. Between the Ghoutta attack in August 2013 to the incident in Idlib province this week, the situation on the ground in Syria has changed dramatically. Then the Assad regime seemed to have only a tenuous grip on power. The policy of the West and its allies was to see Syria's leader - already branded by some as a war criminal - forced from office. There was still a good deal of talk about a credible "democratic" opposition, which, if given sufficient means, could wrest control of much of the country from the Assad regime and IS alike. Fast forward to today. Such hopes proved illusory. The "democratic" opposition proved to have a very limited military capacity. Many of its most capable elements are closely linked to al-Qaeda: the next major problem that is likely to face the West some way down the line. The Assad regime, bolstered by Iranian military assistance and Russian air power, has more than consolidated its position. And the most successful Western-backed elements of the opposition - the coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters in northern Syria - may be advancing against IS, but its success
summary: The response to this latest chemical "attack" in Syria will provide a measure of just how far the international community has come in struggling with the security crisis in Syria.