The prophecy, 'the burden of Damascus', as it were, *is* that Damascus will literally cease to be a functioning, inhabited city, literally in a very short time frame. Can you name me *one* instance in its several millenia existence where this occurred? No, it had never happened, and thus *must*, by process of elimination, occur at some future date.
During the reign of Assad's father, I could not foresee this happening, since *that* individual was too cunning to place his nation and his capital in a position where it could become reality. His son, the chinless wonder? Not so much. Even *he* (Hafez Assad) knew that the current 'strong man' in Syria isn't strong at all, and *never* wanted his son to succeed him. Hell, boy-Assad was trained *not* as a dictator (see Uday and Qusay Hussein for examples), but as an eye-doctor...
the infowarrior
Damascus has been sacked plenty of times. Even Carthage was re-built. Even if ISIS does take over Damascus it will still be lived in. So I just took that to mean conquered. But it may refer to a nuclear explosion - I get what you are saying. I am open to everything at this point.
The problem is there was no real group that could take over that would not be an Islamist type like in Egypt - they over threw Mubarak but the Islamic Brotherhood were the only group that was organized and they took over.