By Sam Dagher (Little, Brown 2019)
I don’t know much about Syria but after recent events in the news I wanted to inform myself about Bashar Al Assad and his regime. I have read a few books about ISIS and several books about Israel and Palestine but had not read a book about Syria. There don’t seem to be that many around and that’s probably reflective of western prejudice surrounding this subject.
I thought that this book really showed the horror of the Assad regime. I liked that it also discussed Bashar’s dad Hafez and goes into his early life and family relationships. The section on the Hama massacre of 1982 goes to show how much Bashar copied his dad’s rule. However, reading the part on the beginning of the protests, you can see how desperate he was to prove himself as ‘his own man’ and that he was sick of everyone going on about his brother and his father all the time. Reading this you get the feeling that at first Bashar was weak and didn’t want to go against his family who were telling him to ‘toughen up’ and act like a dictator like his dad, before fully embracing that role and surpassing even the terrible things his dad did. Ultimately this had terrible consequences for the people of Syria.
I liked the fact that it talked about how ISIS had been so helped by the regime and in fact many of its goals were the same as Bashar’s. That they even cooperated with intelligence agencies or ‘mukhabarat’ on occasion when it had a mutual benefit. For example one activist was tortured in a prison run by ISIS and one of the first questions asked was whether they were members of the Free Syrian Army or defectors from the Assad regime army or something else. Assad viewed the rebels who were secular or more inclusive as a bigger threat as they could potentially be more popular than he was. Both ISIS and Assad saw their own leadership in a similar light in terms of having a right to rule and do what they want, and anything that offered an actual choice to the people was deemed as a threat.
Dagher goes out of his way to show how the revolution in Syria was peaceful and gradually got coopted by these more extreme elements. While he might not have wanted ISIS to take over swathes of the country, in some ways they were the perfect enemy for Bashar because he could then prove himself as a hero fighting terrorists. However, soldiers from his regime also released videos of beheading etc, and the Assads subverted religious teachings in order to get Shias and Alawites to fight for him.
What is quite striking is the role of propaganda in the story. Assad was able to charm the western world through a secular appearance, the fact that he had a cultured British wife (who played a fully active role in the regime) and at one point was courted by celebrities and Western leaders. In Syrian elections, Assad was the only candidate allowed to run and he showed off the results as evidence of his popularity, yet he was still regarded as somewhat modern and pro reform until it was too late. The book doesn’t point it out, but this is similar to what ISIS did in its use of propaganda, producing well made magazines and recruiting westerners to further its appeal.
At the same time as Assad was declaring himself as a protector of minorities, thousands of people were being brutally tortured and killed, and supporters of the regime were declaring ‘Assad or we burn the country’ or ‘There is no God but Bashar’. The descriptions of how Assad was enthralled by Hezbollah and Russia was quite pathetic. He tried to organise the Syrian army to resemble Hezbollah even though it was an armed group and not an army, and at his most recent presidential inauguration set it up so he would walk through Kremlin style gold doors.
The book does rely on Manaf Klass’s testimony quite a lot. He was a former regime insider who defected in 2012. I find it hard to see him as a credible or sympathetic character given his previous friendship with Bashar and his father’s long involvement with Hafez, which he seemed quite sympathetic towards. I find it hard to imagine someone who was friends with Assad for that long had that much issue with human rights violations but maybe he did. Personally I didn’t find the parts focused on Manaf very interesting. The others interviewed in the book have fascinating stories (although very grim ones). I can only hope that in the Syria without Assad some sort of healing is possible.
The tortures and execution methods described in the book are gruesome. There aren’t many graphic descriptions but what there was was quite upsetting to read about. However, people should read about it, as they need to know just how bloodthirsty the regime was. People were tortured, sexually assaulted and killed for the slightest thing, and sometimes when they were told they were going to be released or thought they were just going to meet an official. It took place with Assad’s full knowledge.
The scale of what has been revealed is mind boggling horror, with at least 100,000 people known to have been killed and their bodies dumped in what has been described in the largest mass grave in the world. There are articles about kids who have been regularly finding bones and skulls when playing in the vicinity. The book doesn’t discuss these graves really but discusses what was already in the public domain in 2019, which was horrific enough.
Due to the fact that ISIS became a bigger threat to much of the world outside Syria and the nature of Assad’s propaganda, attention stopped being paid to what he did, and people need to know. As well as this, the book discusses his horrific ‘barrel bombs’ and chemical weapons, which were designed to cause maximum pain and suffering. He was able to make a mockery of international criticism of these weapons and just carry on doing it.
All in all the book was really good and I feel I learned much more about Syria as a result. I’ll probably add to this review soon, as it has given me a lot to think about. If there is going to be another edition covering the end of this horrifying regime, I’d like to read it.
Buy the book at: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Assad-or-We-Burn-the-Country-by-Sam-Dagher/9780316556736 or on Amazon, Waterstones and most other bookshops.
