Syria: Civil War to Holy War?

A widely recognized expert on the unfolding crisis in Syria here melds reportage, analysis, and history in an accessible overview of events leading up to the toppling of the Assad regime and the fragile prospects for peace in its wake. How did the Syrian regime fall? Gradually, then all at once. In December 2024, the long and bloody stalemate in Syria broke down. In a transformation breathtaking for its suddenness and speed, President Bashar al-Assad, the beating heart of Arab authoritarianism, fled to Russia, his dungeons emptying as rebels overcame the Syrian army with scarcely a fight. Euphoria at the collapse of a government people never voted for was tempered by fear for the future. The victorious insurgents were supported by outside powers and had a track record of brutality comparable to Assad’s in addition to religious fanaticism. Syrians—whose fragile, cosmopolitan mosaic has been repeatedly shattered by foreign-backed sectarians—faced rule by an avowedly Islamist regime that pledged to break with its past and show tolerance to all religious communities. In this illuminating and concise survey, Charles Glass shows how Assad’s misrule, Sunni fundamentalism, and Western deceit combined to create and prolong the Syrian disaster, which since 2011 has claimed more than two hundred thousand lives and driven more than eight million people from their homes. Glass has reported extensively from the Middle East and travelled frequently in Syria for more than fifty years. Here he melds reportage, analysis, and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict, situating it clearly in the broader crises of the region. In this new and thoroughly revised edition of his earlier Syria Burning, Glass brings the story to the present, showing how we got here and what a post-Assad settlement might bring.