No one has a solution for the continuing civil war in Syria. China and Russia are opposed to any international intervention. However, as the civil war takes share and the death rate accelerates and the surrounding countries' number of refugees mounts, it will become clear that no action is a choice that will descend into a massacre. The Alawites will eventually lose the civil war and without any international intervention the murderous history of their rule will open the way for revenge. The only solution is partition of the country with the Alawites given a small area in Latakia under Turkish or UN protection. The rest of the country will have to make arrangements for other minorities but it is also clear that the present borders have no legal basis as they were imposed by the British and French at the end of WWI and have no logic. To avoid chaos the most practical route would be to give Turkey a mandate over most of the northern portion and Jordan over the southern areas with some eastern sections, especially that with Kurdish majorities put under Iraqi (that is northern provisional Kurdish control). Some background follows.
It is obvious that the Assad government is based on the Alawite minority which has a fear of oppression as a minority both by the Ottomans, dominant Sunni and the French ("Creating Phantoms": Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta Crisis, and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria Author(s): Keith D. Watenpaugh Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1996), pp. 363-389). They made up the majority of the French army during colonialism and yet suffered discrimination and abuse by both the French and the Sunni majority. They will not surrender their dominant position for fear of reprisals or massacre.
That leaves the question of what might happen if they relinquished power or entered into a power sharing arrangement. Who or what could guarantee their safety especially after what they have done. The situation is parallel to turns of power in Lebanon over the past 100 years. How could Alawites be protected or their rights of citizens preserved? Would the Arab League do this, NATO, the UN? There certainly would be the possibility of violence as bad as at present and of refugees in numbers as great or greater. Where would they go? Turkey has now given up on them and they have many enemies in Lebanon. This needs considerable consideration. This is why a Turkish mandate with Arab League troops might be an acceptable or workable solution.
Bashar al-Assad is doing all the wrong things and he is building up a time bomb that will release a terrible cost on the Alawites, his religious group. The Ba'ath party which ostensibly is the ruling party in Syria is called the Qotri or regionalist party of the Ba'ath movement, an Arab socialist movement quite different from Marxism but with similarities with Leninism and Stalinism. It is a one-party rule idea, but based in Syria on a religious foundation and kinship group. Based roughly on the ideas of Michel Aflaq’s writings, for example, On the Way of Resurrection, the history of the party is more equivalent to Stalinist concepts of dictatorship and one party rule. This is strange given that the Alawi religion (a sect of Shia, the term dates from the French conquest, they called themselves the "Nusayri" prior to that as followers of Ibn Nusayr who declared himself a "bab" = gateway to truth in 859 A.D. See Daniel Pipes, "The Alawi capture of power in Syria" Middle Eastern Studies, v. 25, n. 4, Oct 1989: 429-450, it can be downloaded free from JSTOR at most libraries), at least in some other locations and historically, is characterized by openness and democratic relations, especially between men and women. The effect the Assad's are having on the Alawi reputation is certainly a negative one considering this background, but then the ideas of religion and the practice are certainly often diametrically opposed, as in the preaching of love of Christians and the fact of a history of extermination (Native Americans), slavery (Africans) and war (all the inventions of the weapons of mass destruction and the modern methods of war were by Christians).
The Assads have taken a brutal avenue of repression to solve economic and social problems that can only be successfully re-directed by using the meager resources of Syria to spur innovation through education and investment in technology. That time has passed.
The utter failure of the Syrian government to face the unrest for democracy with discussion, proposals and change should be clear to everyone by now. The murders of demonstrators by the security forces and the military, especially those of children in the past few days, has shown that the Alawite regime will do anything to stay in power. They are morally bankrupt and have abandoned even the tenets of their own religious beliefs to retain power. The article by Robert Baer in the Financial Times on March 31st 2011 predicted this outcome. As a former CIA operative Baer had intimate knowledge of how the Alawite-dominanted army is run and the security forces work. Now the world is becoming familiar with the savagery of what they are capable of doing.