Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring - Softcover

Carsten Wieland

4

7 ratings by Goodreads

9781614570028: Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1614570027 ISBN 13: 9781614570028

Publisher: Cune, 2012

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

When Arab Spring swept the region, Syria s President Bashar al-Asad thought that he was safe. Over the previous five years, the moderate opposition had been crushed. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, Syria had taken an anti-US stance since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Syrians were used to living under sanctions and being called terrorists. Asad told movie stars Brad and Angelina when they visited Damascus that he did not need personal security, because ordinary Syrians were protecting him. The Syrian president was convinced that Syrians loved him.

And not only Syrians. Vogue agreed in its March 2011 puff piece that described Asad's wife as a Rose in the Desert. What of Syrian naysayers? Asad counted on his ruthless and all-seeing mukhabarat to keep them in line.

Tackling politics, society, religion, and economy, Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances explores the eleven years of Asad s rule between the clampdown on Damascus Spring in 2001 and the challenge of escalating street protests in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012.

Author Carsten Wieland interviewed the major opposition figures year by year over this decade. A valuable complement to the growing body of indigenous reporting (youtube videos, blog commentary), Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances provides context and expert insight that reveals the essential struggle and untold barbarity unfolding here in what Syrian government tourist brochures call the cradle of civilization.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Carsten Wieland (Ph.D.) is a diplomat with the German Foreign Office. The Syria specialist worked as a political consultant, analyst, author and journalist.

Review:

Carsten Wieland plumbs the contradictions of contemporary Syrian life and politics. He was among the first Westerners . . . in the early years of Bashar s presidency . . . to interview Syrian opposition members as well as government officials. He explored the reasons that many young Syrians had such high expectations of their young president even as so many reviled the government and the Baath Party for its corruption and and repression. Their expectations, we now know, were dashed. Wieland is even-handed and measured; he knows Arabic and has lived in Syria for years. Better yet, he listens. Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances is timely and important. Everyone interested in Syria should read this book. --Joshua Landis is the Director of the Center of Middle East Studies at U of Oklahoma and founder of the Syriacomment blog.

Carsten Wieland, with his first-hand experience of the country and keen analytical mind, has established himself as one of the premier contemporary Syria watchers.

Syria-A Decade of Lost Chances is a must read for those seeking to understand the current uprising. The book s meticulous command of empirical detail, analytically framed and interpreted, makes it an invaluable historical record.

Particularly strong is Wieland's analysis of the contradictory personality of Bashar al-Asad, of the power struggles within the regime, of the causes and consequences of missed opportunities for reform that might have headed off revolution and of the counterproductive violent response to protestors that propelled it. --Dr. Raymond Hinnebusch, Director Centre for Syrian Studies University of St. Andrews

. . . since Bashar Al-Assad became President in June 2000. The early hope for change towards pluralism and democracy (a Damascene spring) was not fulfilled. The tragic story of an unflinching opposition struggling for democracy against a rigid authoritarian minority regime lead by the Assad clan is told on the basis of many interviews with leading figures of the opposition while describing the savage repression of a regime which cannot reform itself and is still not willing to give up its power and privileges.

. . . readers who want a better understanding of the root causes of Syria's ongoing revolts, will be enthralled by this vivid account of Syria s recent political history since Bashar Al Assad became President in July 2000. --Gunter Mulack, President of the German Orient Institute, Past German ambassador to Syria

Carsten Wieland, with his first-hand experience of the country and keen analytical mind, has established himself as one of the premier contemporary Syria watchers.

Syria-A Decade of Lost Chances is a must read for those seeking to understand the current uprising. The book s meticulous command of empirical detail, analytically framed and interpreted, makes it an invaluable historical record.

Particularly strong is Wieland's analysis of the contradictory personality of Bashar al-Asad, of the power struggles within the regime, of the causes and consequences of missed opportunities for reform that might have headed off revolution and of the counterproductive violent response to protestors that propelled it. --Dr. Raymond Hinnebusch, Director Centre for Syrian Studies University of St. Andrews

. . . since Bashar Al-Assad became President in June 2000. The early hope for change towards pluralism and democracy (a Damascene spring) was not fulfilled. The tragic story of an unflinching opposition struggling for democracy against a rigid authoritarian minority regime lead by the Assad clan is told on the basis of many interviews with leading figures of the opposition while describing the savage repression of a regime which cannot reform itself and is still not willing to give up its power and privileges.

. . . readers who want a better understanding of the root causes of Syria's ongoing revolts, will be enthralled by this vivid account of Syria s recent political history since Bashar Al Assad became President in July 2000. --Gunter Mulack, President of the German Orient Institute Past German ambassador to Syria

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.