Quarterly Essay 58 Blood Year: Terror And The Islamic State - Plot & Excerpts
But it escalated into insurgency within weeks, as troops gunned down protestors, while regime death squads, shabiha (“spooks”), launched a campaign of kidnapping, torture and murder. As it turned out, Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, had learnt from watching what had happened to Ben Ali in Tunisia, Saleh in Yemen and Mubarak in Egypt, and from what was happening to Gaddafi in Libya: he had no intention of going quietly. On the contrary, he was determined to crush the uprising as quickly and brutally as possible. Assad also had sponsors – Iran and Russia – who were committed to his survival, and were there for him in ways the United States no longer was for Mubarak or Saleh, and nobody had ever been for Gaddafi or Ben Ali.The Iranians, in particular, had been through their own pro-democracy unrest during the Green Movement in 2009 – a precursor to the Arab Spring – and had used the experience to hone their already well-developed tools of repression. Support from Iran and Russia, the international focus on Libya, and capable home-grown institutions like the widely feared Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate, may explain why Assad survived the democracy movement when Mubarak and Gaddafi didn’t.
What do You think about Quarterly Essay 58 Blood Year: Terror And The Islamic State?
