Geneva II: does 'smoking gun' threaten Syria peace talks?

The peace conference set to begin on Wednesday will include the first talks between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents.

But hopes of a breakthrough are negligible at a time when fighting has escalated and neither side shows any sign of retreating from its demands or being able to end the war with a victory.
One western diplomat said: "At best, Geneva II will reconfirm agreements made during the first Geneva conference, call for ceasefires, maybe prisoners swap and so on.
"At the same time, those taking part in the talks are de facto giving legitimisation to Damascus. They are talking to Assad's government on the other side of the table. And so the show would go on while Assad stays in power."

Humanitarian consequences

Around a third of Syria's 22 million people have been driven from their homes, many to refugee camps abroad. Half are in desperate need of international aid.

The country at the heart of the Middle East has been carved up on ethnic and sectarian lines, with neighbours and distant powers lining up to arm and fund rival factions.
The bleak humanitarian consequences of the war were illustrated starkly in photographs of the emaciated and abused bodies of detainees, released in a report by London law firm Carter Ruck, hired by Qatar - made available to the Guardian and CNN.
Top prosecutors and forensic experts said that the photos smuggled out of Syria were "clear evidence" of mass killing and torture.
Tens of thousands of photos, taken by a photographer who has now defected, appear to show emaciated, bloodstained corpses bearing signs of torture.
Some had no eyes, while others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.
The military police photographer's job was to record the deaths of those in custody from March 2011 until August 2013.