Syria 2011-2013

Description

Azmi Bishara’s book on the Syrian Revolution is one of the most comprehensive and profound works on the subject published to date. Translated here into English for the first time, the study examines the complex roots of Syria’s political and sectarian conflicts from the day revolution erupted on 15th March 2011 to its descent into civil war in the two years that followed. The book unearths and discusses the very first signs of protests from across Daraa, Hama, Aleppo, Damascus, Raqqa, Deir El Zour, Edlib and Homs, and it deals with Syria’s ruralization process and the subsequent economic ‘liberalization’, which eventually led to the revolt against the Baath party. The work is based on high-level interviews, analysis of the country’s socio-economic background, and examination of the Syrian regime’s strategy and its political and media discourse.
Syria’s revolution is chronicled in two stages: the peaceful civil stage and the armed stage. Bishara’s analysis first centres on the regime’s strategy, unveiling despotism, massacres, kidnapping, sectarian tendencies, jihadist violence, the emergence of warlords, and the chaotic spread of arms. He then turns to the role of the opposition to narrate in detail the events that broke out and exactly how a peaceful protest turned into an armed struggle. The book provides a roadmap to how revolution broke out and is a comprehensive analysis of what drove those early events. Its publication brings renowned Arabic-language scholarship to the English-speaking world.

Azmi Bishara is an Arab intellectual, political writer and one of the most prominent scholars in the Arab world for his work on global issues and the Arab region in particular. Bishara is currently the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Qatar and chairs the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. Bishara received the Ibn Rushd Prize for Free Thought in 2002 and the Human Rights Award from Global Exchange in 2003.

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Bitter Harvest: Ten Years of Bashar al-Assad’s Rule
Chapter 2: From Spark to Fire
Chapter 3: Protests in the Main Squares
Chapter 4: Masses in the Cities: A Revolutionary Movement in Damascus and Aleppo
Chapter 5: An Armed Revolution
Chapter 6: The Regime’s Strategy
Chapter 7: Ruralization of the Party and Sectarianization of the Army: The Origins of Sectarian Discourse and Violence
Chapter 8: Sectarian Violence Unleashed
Chapter 9: Violence: Between Revolutionary Violence and Remnants from Previous Eras
Chapter 10: The Opposition
Chapter 11: New Actors
Chapter 12: Initiatives for a Political Solution and the International Positions
Chapter 13: The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Syria’s Macroeconomy
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5

“Azmi Bishara’s work constitutes a classic in the cannon of literature on the Syrian Uprising. Bishara is not only a scholar providing detailed analyses of the tragic events unfolding between 2011-13, he is concurrently a political activist eloquently articulating the painful path to Syria’s freedom.” — Omar Imady, University of St Andrews, UK

Additional information