In early 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding greater political freedoms and civil rights—only to receive in return state-sponsored repression and violence. The population grew angry, then armed and then, in some instances, turned jihadi.
Five years on, the Syrian civil war is a mesh of sectarian divisions and hatreds. Charles Lister, a former fellow at the Brookings Doha Institute, has one goal in mind. He wants to tell the story of the emergence and evolution of the struggle of Sunni jihadists and their Syrian Salafist allies against President Bashar al-Assad, and he tells it with exceptional erudition and lucidity.
He is well placed to do so. He has spent years engaging with hundreds of Syrian insurgents ranging from those fighting on the front lines to senior commanders and political figures, from teenagers to middle-aged men, from the secular to the devout. This wide-ranging access gives the book a vitality that combines with the author’s comprehensive analysis of Syria, its political structures and its history to give the
most detailed account yet written of how Sunni jihadists have come to dominate an (admittedly loose) anti-regime movement that still largely wants in 2016 what it wanted in 2011.
By examining where Syria’s jihadists came from, what helped to make them the force they are today and, critically, how the latest bombing campaigns by Russian and the United States might affect their future role in Syria, Lister has produced a work that is required reading for both experts and the general reader alike.
