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Title details for Syrian Requiem by Itamar Rabinovich - Available

Syrian Requiem

The Civil War and Its Aftermath

by Itamar Rabinovich
Carmit Valensi
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A compact, incisive history of a war that was an ominous prelude to Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Leaving almost half a million dead and displacing an estimated twelve million people, the Syrian Civil War is a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale. Syrian Requiem analyzes the causes and course of this bitter conflict—from its first spark in a peaceful Arab Spring protest to the tenuous victory of the Asad dictatorship—and traces how the fighting has reduced Syria to a crisis-ridden vassal state with little prospect of political reform, national reconciliation, or economic reconstruction.
Israel's chief negotiator with Syria during the mid-1990s, Itamar Rabinovich brings unmatched expertise and insight to the politics of the Middle East. Drawing on more than two hundred specially conducted interviews with key players, Rabinovich and Carmit Valensi assess the roles of local, regional, and global interests in the war. Local sectarian divisions established the fault lines of the initial conflict, ultimately leading to the rise of the brutal Islamic State. However, Syria rapidly became the stage for proxy warfare between contending regional powers, including Israel, Turkey, and Iran. At the same time, while a war-weary United States attempted to reduce its military involvement in the Middle East, a resurgent Russia regained regional influence by supporting Syrian government forces. Telling the story of the war and its aftermath, Rabinovich and Valensi also examine the considerable potential for renewed conflict and the difficult policy choices facing the United States, Russia, and other powers.
A compact and incisive history of one of the defining wars of our times, Syrian Requiem is a vivid and timely account of a conflict that continues to reverberate today.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 16, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780691212616

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780691212616
      • File size: 1901 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      January 1, 2021
      Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Rabinovich and national-security expert Valensi home in on the intractable problem of a Syria mired in civil war. "Authoritative figures of the casualties...are unavailable," write the authors, "but most sources agree that by the middle of 2019, close to half a million people had died in Syria, and close to 12 million Syrians had become refugees or...internally displaced persons." In their cogent analysis, the authors trace the nation's internal conflict to the early 1960s, when the Ba'th Party assumed rule. Crippled from the start by former colonizer France's "divide and rule" strategy of drawing on minority populations to staff the military, the Ba'th Party was founded by "two Damascene intellectuals" whose program "offered a secular vision of Arab nationalism combined with a social democratic ideology." This naturally put the regime athwart of the growing insurgent movement in recent years, but it also hampered the growth of the private sector. As of 2008, the authors write, even with a growing GNP, "almost 70 percent of Syrian employees earned less than one hundred dollars a month." A decade ago, conditions were ripe for the civil war that followed, which featured proxy elements, the U.S. supporting rebels, Russia and Iran supporting the government. By 2014, the country had suffered a vast brain drain as its artists and intellectuals fled. The government, meanwhile, suffered a blow with the assassination of Iranian general and strategist Qasem Soleimani, killed by an American drone in January 2020. Yet American policy in the country, the authors rightly note, has been inconsistent thanks to Donald Trump's "persistent desire to disengage from Syria." This has favored the existing government and changed the face of the region's political makeup, "shaped by the new roles of Iran and Turkey, and by America's withdrawal and Russia's resurgence." A valuable book for students of geopolitics and the ever turbulent Middle East.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

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Languages

  • English

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