India, Oct. 31 -- The death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi serves as a symbolic full stop to the many civil wars that have engulfed Syria in the last eight years, although Baghdadi was not personally in charge of anything by the time he died. The outcome of all those wars was already becoming clear and it is the Russians and Bashar al-Assad who have won.
US President Donald Trump's abrupt withdrawal of American troops from eastern Syria makes the Russian victory clear: Within days, there were Russian soldiers taking selfies in the abandoned American bases on the Syrian side of the frontier with Turkey.
Trump's elaborate thanks to the Russian, Syrian and Turkish Governments for their aid in the Baghdadi operation was a genuflection be...