The Group of Eight leaders meeting at Camp David continue to back the Syrian peace plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan in April, announcing it was time to focus on a political transition in the dismembered country. But they have not gone beyond that.

The big powers do not have the stomach to do much more. They have left the burden of the fight to proxy forces on the ground that are becoming increasingly aware that their best chance of meaningful change is not through a military fight that they almost certainly cannot win but through participation in the reform process and the dialogue that the government has offered.

But dialogue seems a distant hope. The opposition will accept nothing less than the regime’s ouster, and the government brands its opponents as terrorists.

The internal opposition in Syria is thus becoming increasingly frustrated with the way things are progressing, and clear divisions are emerging between those based outside the country, perhaps happy to see Syria split every which way in the hope that sheer chaos will eventually topple the Al-Assad regime, and those who actually have to live with the consequences.

This prospect of an end to the civil war and a negotiated peace that brings about a reform process without destabilizing the country is not necessarily what the big powers have in mind. Despite their claims to the contrary, a stable Syrian-led process could be the last thing they want, as it leaves open the possibility of Syria remaining a strong, independent state — exactly the possibility they seek to exclude.

It could be that what the West fears most is a peaceful resolution to the crisis; what it would like most is the installation of a weak, compliant government.

So, there is a growing perception, even amongst the Syrian opposition movement itself, that both the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council are naively and ironically working in the interests of foreign powers to prolong a civil war that has killed 10,000 people since the revolt began in March last year.

And the news does not get better as now Aleppo, the country’s second largest city, and one that has largely remained loyal to Al-Assad during the 15-month uprising, has become restive with Syrian security forces firing tear gas and live ammunition to disperse thousands rallying over the weekend in what activists say has been the largest protest yet in the city. Al-Assad’s ability to keep control of Aleppo is just one more of his many key tests of survival.

However, few players, intent on their own goals, seem to have given much thought to what Syria, the country, signifies far beyond Al-Assad and the opposition to him, or what its destruction might mean.

As was the case previously with Iraq, where Saddam Hussein became the focus of obsessive concern to the lasting detriment of the country he ruled, Syria has been reduced to no more than a battleground for the Al-Assad regime and its opposition.

It is not the passing of the Al-Assad regime, but of Syria itself, that should be the biggest concern.