Destroying A Nation: The Civil War in Syria – Nikolaos Van Dam
Author: Nikolaos Van Dam
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Print Length: 256 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction / Cultural Studies, Non-Fiction / Politics & Political Science
Area: Syria
People: Syrian
Topic: Civil War, Conflict & Post-Conflict, Military, Nation
Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this important book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria, Nikolaos van Dam, explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Asad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to an immense amount of destruction in the refined social fabric of what used to be the Syrian nation.
Through an in-depth examination, van Dam traces political developments within the Asad regime and the various opposition groups from the Arab Spring to the present day, and provides a deeper insight into the conflict and the possibilities and obstacles for reaching a political solution.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
MAP OF SYRIA
Introduction
1 A Synopsis of Ba’thist history before the Syrian Revolution (2011)
2 Could the war in Syria have been avoided?
3 Confrontation between the military of the regime and the opposition
4 The ambivalent Western approach to the Syria conflict
5 Intra-Syrian talks but no negotiations
Conclusions
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LIST OF MOVEMENTS AND FACTIONS
Nikolaos Van Dam is a former Dutch diplomat who, between 1988 and 2010, served as the ambassador of the Netherlands to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Germany and Indonesia, and as the Dutch Special Envoy for Syria between 2015 and 2016. As a junior diplomat he served in Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Libya. He has published a multitude of books on the Middle East, including The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba’th Party (4th ed. 2011), Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria (2017), Granaten en minaretten: Een diplomaat op zoek naar vrede in de Arabische en islamitische wereld (2020) (a reflection on his experiences as a diplomat in search of peace in the Arab and Islamic world), and De vrede die niet kwam (1998). Some of his books were also published in Arabic, Turkish and several other languages.
Source: https://thehagueinstituteforglobaljustice.org/portfolio/nikolaos-van-dam/
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