Members of Syria's diverse Christian communities are finding themselves engulfed in the fog of war and increasingly targeted.

The world must not allow the Syrian crisis to "play itself out," as some analysts have suggested: This threat to the country's minorities (many of whom are unarmed) is simply too great, and the consequences too severe, to play this sort of Russian roulette on a national-societal scale.

What are the possible scenarios for a post-Assad Syria, in both the short- and long-terms, and how is the global community prepared to deal with them?

In a land of bitter conflict, Arab Christians have always been the go-betweens, the human bridge between the Islamic world and the Christian West. Their exodus now would leave a huge void.