The collapse of Syria into civil war over the past two years has spawned a regional crisis whose reverberations grow louder with each passing month. In this timely account, John McHugo seeks to contextualize the headlines, providing broad historical perspective and a richly layered analysis of a country few in the United States know or understand. McHugo charts the history of Syria from World War I to the tumultuous present, examining the country's thwarted attempts at independence, the French policies that sowed the seeds of internal strife, and the fragility of its foundations as a nation. He then turns to more recent events: religious and sectarian tensions that have riven Syria, the pressures of the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and two generations of rule by the Assads. The result is a fresh and rigorous narrative that explains both the creation and unraveling of the current regime and the roots of the broader Middle East conflict. As the Syrian civil war threatens to draw the U.S. military once again into the Middle East, here is a rare and authoritative guide to a complex nation that demands our attention.
About the Author
After studying Arabic and Islamic studies at Oxford University and the American University in Cairo in the early 1970s, John McHugo s career as an international lawyer took him to a number of Arab countries including Egypt, Oman and Bahrain over a period of more than a quarter of a century. He is an honorary Senior Fellow at the Centre for Syrian Studies at St Andrews, and a board member of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and the British Egyptian Society. He has also written on legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli dispute and advised Tim Farron, when he was leader of the Liberal Democrats, on Palestinian issues. His other publications include the critically acclaimed A Concise History of the Arabs and Syria: A Recent History. www.johnmchugo.com
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