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FREE SYRIA BURNING: A SHORT HISTORY OF A CATASTROPHE PDF Charles Glass,Patrick Cockburn | 192 pages | 22 Mar 2016 | Verso Books | 9781784785161 | English | London, United Kingdom Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe, Book Reviews Aya Hossam | Insight Turkey Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe Syria Burning by Charles Glass. What are the origins of the Syrian crisis, and why did no one do anything to stop it? Militant Sunni groups, such as ISIS, have taken control of large swathe What are the origins of the Syrian crisis, and why did no one do anything to stop it? The impact of this catastrophe is now being felt on the streets of Europe and the United States. Veteran Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe East expert Charles Glass combines reportage, analysis, and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict. He also gives a powerful argument for why the West has failed to get to grips with the consequences of the crisis. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published March 22nd by Verso first published June 10th More Details Other Editions 9. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Syria Burningplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jul 03, David M rated it it was amazing. Practically everyone has gotten Syria wrong - horribly, catastrophically wrong. This short volume should be required reading for the whole human species. The author is remarkably compassionate and even-handed especially when you consider he was held hostage by Hezbollah in the eightiesbut in the end there's really no getting around just how miserably the world has failed Syria. Not a sin of omission, as someone like Samantha Power might have you believe, but a thousand different sins Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe comm Practically everyone has gotten Syria wrong - horribly, catastrophically wrong. Not a sin of omission, as someone like Samantha Power might have you believe, but a thousand different sins of commission. Yes, Assad bears primary responsibility for the bloodshed. His decision to fire on unarmed demonstrators in is what precipitated the whole catastrophe. That said, the important question is not whether Assad deserves to be president nobut what is likely to replace him were he to fall. The gruesome answer has come in the form of pogroms against religious minorities in rebel-controlled areas of Syria. Severed Alawite heads on stakes in the public square. All the major actors end up looking pretty horrible in Glass's telling, but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia deserves to be singled out. They have a long history of coopting revolutions for their reactionary ends. This goes back to the seventies, when they opted to sponsor Arafat over the more progressive wing of the Palestinian liberation movement. Isis was Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe the latest, most extreme incarnation. They learned their hate from KSA. All in all, a cancer on humanity. Since the violence in Syria has wound down a bit, Yemen has become the site of the world's greatest humanitarian crisis, and once again Saudi fingerprints are everywhere. This time not as a sponsor of proxy violence, but as direct aggressor. The looming Yemeni holocaust will be entirely on the hands of the Saudis and their backers in the west. This is true, and yet we shouldn't let it obscure a couple of other true things. It arose as response to the American invasion and occupation of the Iraq, then fed off the feedback loop of chaos with Syria. The myth of Obama's non-intervention needs to be debunked. After Assad brutally put down the peaceful democratic demonstrators in '11, there arose the armed opposition. These should be seen as two separate phenomena. In contrast to the indigenous, largely secular movement for democracy, the armed rebellion was mainly jihadist and always dependent on outside powers for arms and funding. Many of these militias would quickly become too insane for their sponsors to control or tolerate. Neither Isis nor Nusra Front actually took orders from a foreign government; that doesn't change the fact that they couldn't have existed, or fought the way the did, were it not for outside sponsorship. The idea that America should have done more to intervene militarily in Syria is dangerous and demonstrably false. The Syrian tragedy is largely that of a nation being treated like a chess board. There is some historical context in the book that readers might find useful, but there is very little about the present crisis that is either accurate, insightful or unbiased. Glass is at pains to conceal the imbalance of forces in Syria and tries to create a false parity by mentioning regime crimes in passing while focusing most Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe his attention on the opposition's shortcomings. He makes the task easier for himself by lumping the opposition together with ISIS a monstrous outfit that terrorizes There is some historical context in the book that readers might find useful, but there is very little about the present crisis that is either accurate, insightful or unbiased. He makes the task easier for himself by lumping the opposition together with ISIS a monstrous outfit that terrorizes Syrians and which Syrian rebels have been fighting for over two years. Glass also reprises old-conspiracy theories, including a dubiously worded mention of the chemical massacre, which he curiously tries to blame equally on the victims. Glass acknowledges that the uprising was initially peaceful, but, like other ideologues, fails to mention why it got militarized except suggesting that it was all a foreign conspiracy. Overall Syria Burning gives the impression a book hastily put together by a publisher to make a quick buck off a hot topic. It neither enlightens nor edifies. View 2 comments. Sometimes I am troubled by the thought that Left-leaning presses regard occasionally regard the discipline of editing as an ideologically conservative pitfall and one conducive to reifying existing power structures. Perhaps people are just people and being lazy isn't a political statement? Whatever the contributing factors, this is a poorly made book about a complex conflict which has exacted a horrific cost on its people, the region and the world at large. The thesis asserted by Glass is that S Sometimes I am troubled by the thought that Left-leaning presses regard occasionally regard the discipline of editing as an ideologically conservative pitfall and one Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe to reifying existing power structures. The thesis asserted by Glass is that Syria is a political not ethnic construct, established by Sykes-Picot for the enrichment of the UK and France disregarding the human populations of the Levant. No one can argue with that. This is a messy book which does Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe a portrait of historic precedents within Syria but lacks the sequence and structure to be persuasive. View 1 comment. Jan 24, Josiah Hawkins rated it it was ok Shelves: warread-so-you-dont-have-to. This is a pretty hard Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe to review, because on the one hand it contains a lot of important history but on the other side it barely does what it's supposed to do. When the Syrian Civil War broke out in most people expected it to topple the government within the year, if the previous protests of the Arab Spring were to be believed another Middle Eastern country would convert to a democratic Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe. Now the country is six years removed from the beginning of the uprising and after a number o This is a pretty hard book to review, because on the one hand it contains a lot of important history but on the other side it barely does what it's supposed to do. Now the country is six years removed from the beginning of the uprising and after a number of complex moves it would appear as though the war could go on for ever. I do agree with the forward of Syria Burning in that there is a need for a conscience well researched history of the conflict, but this is not it. I would venture to guess that most people don't understand much about the conflict aside from Gary Johnson's Aleppo gaffe and the other stories surrounding the siege of that city so a "Short History of a Catastrophe" would probably be well received and do wonders to educate the populace. A piece of advice to anyone writing a history book surrounding one topic, actually talk about it. This particular book contains a lot of interesting history about Syria's issue with governmental stability and their place in the middle east, but very little information about the current conflict facing the nation. There is a short timeline at the books beginning but after that Mr. Glass only dedicates a few paragraphs per chapter to the modern conflict and fills the rest of them with history. The other problem is that he doesn't keep a consistent timeline that moves Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe with the years, he jumps around time periods from paragraph to paragraph and aside from a couple of times where he uses this style to compare history to modern day, this writing style only ends up confusing rather than informing.