Charles R. Lister

The Syrian Jihad is a detailed chronology, 2011-15, of the uprising against Assad and the ensuing civil war between Assad's forces, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State, Ahrar al-Sham, and many many factions and groups, Islamist and not. It is neither an introduction nor a final word, and I found myself often wishing for the sort of writing that takes more time to craft than what the presumed short deadline for this volume would allow. What's missing is colour, motivation, cultural detail and explication—instead we have a blow-by-blow account of major actions in terms of their political and military significance. It's a firehose of names, acronyms, places and dates that might better have been carved apart into a primary text and detailed footnotes, if time weren't of the essence.

In a interview with Aron Lund last year, Lister stated: "Islamists have so often told me stories of how they had Christian, Shia, Alawite, or Druze neighbors whose families had been close for generations; how their children walked to school together; their parents arranged big meals on the weekends; and how their religious differences were never of any relevance. That’s the Syria they all want to go back to, just with Assad out of the way." It strikes me that would make a fine thesis for a book—to what extent is the threat of Syrian partition into warring religious states real or imagined? How committed are the various factions to maintaining Syria's tradition of religious and cultural diversity? I think I would have been much more interested in a sifting of the narratives against that question.

At any rate, Lister has given us a useful book that distinguishes itself by detailed analysis of non-Islamic-State actors in the struggle, and I would hope that it will be treated as foundational by further texts to come on Syria's civil war and related issues.… (mehr)