When the Assad government fell on December 8, 2024, the political nerd in me finally gave in to my ‘What’s this all about?’ bug. A quick online search led me to read the very accessible, informative and eye-opening Burning Country; Syrians in Revolution and War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami.
How I picked this book
When picking up books about areas of conflict, who writes the narrative is extremely important. I try to avoid books by politicians or military generals but prefer works by journalists or academics in the field, local if possible. There is no objective narrative, and one must read widely to understand nuance, but people without real power are more fact-based.
I picked Burning Country as both Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami are writers of Syrian origin and have made activism and journalism their lives’ work. They bring stories from Syria at great personal risk and have known many people who have been martyred to the Syrian cause. My hope before I got into the novel was to see if I could get a better insight into the ground reality of the Syrian Civil War.
Burning Country was also among the more frequently recommended books by other readers with interests in geopolitics.
What does Burning Country cover?
The 11-chapter book can be broadly split into two parts–one describing the rise of the revolution as a truly grassroots movement and the other describing Assad’s government’s brutal response against its own citizens which dragged the country into a full-fledged civil war.
It starts with how the Alawi-led government came into power in the early 20th century and was poised to be the democratic, secular face of Syria. And then how it slowly dissolves into a dictatorship, kept in place both by crushing dissent internally and external support from Iran/Russia (and a blind eye from Western superpowers). As always, the oppression becomes too strong, and resistance is the only choice.
“Freedom is like a magnet, it attracts the people who have been silenced for too long.” – An eyewitness of the Homs protests powerfully summarizes how protest stirred hope and broke decades-long silence
What was truly eye-opening for me was the nuances of how the revolutionary movement shaped in the beginning, focused on local resistance, governance and change. The initial stage of the Syrian revolution was completely grass roots driven by local communities and local leaders.
However, what was mostly a peacefully resistant uprising faced a disproportionately violent response. Assad’s playbook against the resistance and its own civilian population is a litany of war crimes, so eerily similar to what’s happening in Gaza right now. White phosphorous bombs, bunker bombs, starvation as a weapon and destruction of healthcare–it’s like there is a guide on how to crush humanity and all dictators follow it.
And of course, no good came of it. The violence response led to the militarization and increasing influence of Islamist groups.
“The regime’s brutal bombardment of civilian neighborhoods, its torture chambers and starvation sieges, created the anger and despair in which jihadism thrives. For young men who had lost everything, armed jihadist groups seemed to offer power, revenge, and belonging.”
In parallel, we learn about foreign intervention and interference through the US, Iran and Russia, which kept Assad’s government in power. We learn about how the liberal Arab world was so fearful of the rise of radical Islam that they also indirectly helped in the even though Assad’s crimes against his own people were no less. But the Western Orientalist worldview of Islam kept the worldwide opinion of Assad cloudy.
“This was an old regime tactic: to present itself as the essential solution to problems it had itself manufactured — the arsonist posing as fireman. By encouraging jihadist growth, Assad could claim that the only alternatives to his rule were terrorism and chaos.”
And so, Syria became home to proxy wars between Iran, Russia and the United States. The US, despite taking a vocal stand on Assad’s humanitarian crimes, did little else. That Assad could be negotiated with to diminish his power, only led to worse atrocities by the regime, which further increased radicalization of the revolutionary segments and its supporters.
“American diplomatic policy was fairly constant: to encourage Assad to stand down while keeping the regime… in place… The (unrealized) aim was to bring Assad to the negotiating table, never to end his failed regime.”
Given the rise of the jihadists, the complete disillusionment of the more secular, peaceful resistance and the crushing foreign support to Assad finally quelled the civil war with an uncertain future for Syria.
I look forward to the next edition of Burning Country, which will cover how the Assad government actually fell to the Islamic Front. Did the civil war leave such sound foundations for the non-secular faction that it came to fruition in 2024? And what does it mean for the other Middle Eastern Islamic states?
Meanwhile, I highly recommend a clear, detailed view of what transpired before, during and after the Syrian Civil war.
This review is part of my Around the World series, a reading project where I explore books from every country. You can follow the rest of the journey here.
