Besides being a humanitarian disaster, the Syrian war is redrawing the strategic outlook of the region and presents serious and rising challenges to regional and global peace and stability. Meanwhile, the fog of war makes foresight and warning more difficult.

This 2013 report presents three main scenarios (leading to ten sub-scenarios) for the future of Syria and prospects for peace within the next five years, after describing the state of play and the actors on the Syrian battlefield. To consider the fog of war, it identifies indicators to monitor that impact the likelihood of each scenario and sees the scenarios as a dynamic set, where one potential future can morph into another out of an evolving state of play.

The series of posts on Syria, published between 15 April and 8 July 2013, were revised and adapted to constitute this report.