Syria Burning: Isis and the Death of the Arab Spring
by Charles Glass
(OR Books, £11)

SYRIA Burning is the latest in a number of accounts of the Syrian civil war and the rise of Isis to be published by Western journalists in recent months.

What makes this book stand out, however, is its rooting of contemporary events in their longer term historical context.

Contrary, for example, to frequently aired fatalistic claims about Syria’s war being an inevitable consequence of 1,400 years of violent Sunni-Shia rivalry, Glass points out that “tolerance has been [Syria’s] hallmark since Ottoman times.”

Indeed, he notes, “during centuries of productive coexistence, there were only two outbreaks of sectarian conflict that resulted in massacres,” both occurring over 150 years ago, and neither between Sunni and Shia.

Nevertheless, he is under no illusions about the sectarian nature of the insurgency.

“The first victims of a war in Syria were always going to be the religious minorities,” he writes.

“The Alawites and the Christians, who each make up about 10 percent of the population, have found security under the Assad regime,” whereas “if the regime fell, the victors would replace it with a theocratic dictatorship that would purge the country of its diversity, its minorities, its dissidents and its tolerance.”

He discusses the treatment of Aleppo by the “rebels,” who marked their entry to that historic city by burning its centuries-old souqs to the ground, looting schools and planting two 1000kg bombs in the city centre.

The force behind these atrocities were technically neither al-Qaida, nor Isis but rather the West’s golden boys, the supposed “moderates” of the Free Syrian Army, recipients of lavish amounts of weaponry, training and diplomatic cover from Obama, Cameron and Hollande.

“If there are secularist rebels, I haven’t met them,” says a Red Cross worker quoted by Glass.

However, Glass apparently seems to believe that he cannot tell a truth about the insurgents and their backers without immediately following it up with a slander against the government and its supporters.

In career terms, of course, this might make sense. But it it undermines his argument and means he ends up contradicting himself by one minute admitting that the government’s fall would lead to a war against minorities, while the next accusing those supporting the government of prolonging the war.

This “plague on both your houses” approach leads him to miss out important aspects of the story — completely ignoring, for example, not only the various diplomatic initiatives launched by Russia but also the serious concessions made by the Syrian government.

By equating the sectarian insurgency with the internationally recognised government, he is thus perpetuating a disingenuous Western narrative that casts Syria, Iran and Russia as somehow equally culpable for a war which in reality was brought to a hitherto peaceful country courtesy solely of the West and its regional allies.

And, by ignoring the reforms carried out by the government, he diminishes the significance of the reform movement with whom his sympathies supposedly lie.

That said, there is much to be gained by the critical reader from this short and accessible account.

Review by Dan Glazebrook