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Why Assad is still there
Diana Darke on three accounts of Syria's anguish
The Story of Syria Ghayth Armanazi, Gilgamesh Publishing, £14.95
Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria Nikolaos van Dam, IB Tauris, £8.99
We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria Wendy Pearlman, Custom House, £18.99
Complexity reigns in Syria, with numerous players engaged on the world's most chaotic battlefield. But three books, despite their very different approaches, share a simple refrain - the ruling Assad regime sees no need to discuss a political solution. Thanks to the consistent military backing of its powerful allies, Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, it is increasingly getting its own way.
Ghayth Armanazi's The Story of Syria makes 'no apology for a work I always intended to be a personal take on Syrian history'. Such a statement coming from a former diplomat often labelled an Assad apologist might put many a reader off. Yet Armanazi uses his position of particular privilege to provide not just an interesting collection of early photos - one of which shows Syrian women demonstrating in the 1950s - but a surprisingly candid account of how his country became 'Assad's Syria'.
The real meat comes halfway through, where he unravels the unique Hafez al-Assad methodology, essential to understanding how the Syrian state has survived nearly seven years of war. The detailed chapter on Assad senior's 30-year rule takes up a quarter of the book, explaining his trademark caution and how his 1970 coup was 'the most understated in a long line of coups for the last 20 years'. Armanazi charts how the trend of political Islamism from the 1970s onwards was driven by a flow of funds from a newly oil-rich Saudi Arabia, leading to feverish building of mosques and religious schools, and how this in turn led to the rising power of the Muslim Brotherhood, culminating in Assad's revenge, now known as...