Last week, ISIS made two advances, one strategic, the other symbolic in Iraq and Syria. It captured Ramadi, a key city in the heartland of Iraq's al-Anbar region and about 110 kilometers away from Baghdad. It then took Palmyra in Syria where ISIS may extend its violent extremism to the historic relics of this ancient city. Now the world is on its edge dreading new stories of puritanical barbarism in both places. There is no question that these ancient sites, national heritage of the Syrian people and the world, must be protected. But Ahmad Zaidan, Al Jazeera's Islamabad bureau chief and a Syrian journalist himself, points to the irony of "the world turn(ing) to Twitter to save the centuries-old ruins" in Palmyra while the Assad regime continues its massacres of Syria and its people. One wonders how many more genocidal attacks on the Syrian people and its national heritage we will have to witness before we realize that the human carnage perpetrated by both the Assad regime and ISIS will not end without ending this bloody war. ISIS and the company use the Syrian war for recruitment and territorial expansion. The Assad regime has lost control over much of Syria but uses ISIS to divide and weaken the moderate Syrian opposition. It also uses ISIS barbarism as part of its propaganda war. As long as the Syrian war continues, neither the suffering of the Syrian people nor the threat of ISIS will end.This bloody war will not end until and unless the Assad regime is removed from power and a political transition is put in place. Even if you care more about eliminating ISIS terrorism and protecting ancient relics than helping the Syrian people save themselves from the tyranny of a killing machine, one needs to see the connection between the Assad regime staying in power and ISIS spreading terror and destruction across the vast swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territories.There is near universal agreement that Mr. Assad can no longer have a place in the future of Syria for both political and legal reasons. The Assad regime's war crimes and crimes against humanity, which killed 300,000 people, turned millions into refugees and destroyed cities, gets less and less attention than the destruction of relics by ISIS. But there is already enough evidence for a robust case of war crimes against Mr. Assad. Mr. Assad's forces kill indiscriminately with barrel bombs and chemical weapons and cross the so-called "red lines" of the world on a daily basis. The rise of ISIS has not made the Assad regime less of a threat to Syrian people and the region. The trouble is that everyonetarget="_blank"'>