Charles Lister – författare

A concise, accessible overview of the maddeningly complex civil conflict in Syria and its destabilizing impact on both Middle Eastern politics and the broader international system.The Syrian Crisis began with political protest yet evolved into an open and brutal civil war. How did that come to pass? The Syrian Crisis: What Everyone Needs to Know® helps to explain how and why, serving as a comprehensive yet accessible guide to this hugely impactful yet little-understood conflict. Drawing from nearly a decade of research and analysis of the Syrian crisis, Charles Lister provides a wide-angle view of an exceedingly complicated conflict that covers all of its different moving parts. After opening with a history of modern Syria, he shifts to the eruption of political protest and its evolution into an open and brutal civil conflict. The civil war that resulted generated an unprecedented expansion of terrorism, including the rise of ISIS; the resurgence of Russia and Iran; an unparalleled humanitarian and refugee crisis that upended domestic European politics; and the erosion of long-held international norms like the ban on the use of chemical weapons. The crisis in Syria has transformed not just the Middle East, but much of the rest of the world. This book helps to explain how and why.

A concise, accessible overview of the maddeningly complex civil conflict in Syria and its destabilizing impact on both Middle Eastern politics and the broader international system.The Syrian Crisis began with political protest yet evolved into an open and brutal civil war. How did that come to pass? The Syrian Crisis: What Everyone Needs to Know® helps to explain how and why, serving as a comprehensive yet accessible guide to this hugely impactful yet little-understood conflict. Drawing from nearly a decade of research and analysis of the Syrian crisis, Charles Lister provides a wide-angle view of an exceedingly complicated conflict that covers all of its different moving parts. After opening with a history of modern Syria, he shifts to the eruption of political protest and its evolution into an open and brutal civil conflict. The civil war that resulted generated an unprecedented expansion of terrorism, including the rise of ISIS; the resurgence of Russia and Iran; an unparalleled humanitarian and refugee crisis that upended domestic European politics; and the erosion of long-held international norms like the ban on the use of chemical weapons. The crisis in Syria has transformed not just the Middle East, but much of the rest of the world. This book helps to explain how and why.

The eruption of the anti-Assad revolution in Syria has had many unintended consequences, among which is the opportunity it offered Sunni jihadists to establish a foothold in the heart of the Middle East. That Syria's ongoing civil war is so brutal and protracted has only compounded the situation, as have developments in Iraq and Lebanon. Ranging across the battlefields and international borders have been dozens of jihadi Islamist fighting groups, of which some coalesced into significant factions such as Jabhat al Nusra and the Islamic State. This book assesses and explains the emergence since 2011 of Sunni jihadist organisations in Syria's fledgling insurgency, charts their evolution and situates them within the global Islamist project. Unprecedented numbers of foreign fighters have joined such groups, who will almost certainly continue to host them. Thus, external factors in their emergence are scrutinised, including the strategic and tactical lessons learned from other jihadist conflict zones and the complex interplay between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and how it has influenced the jihadist sphere in Syria.Tensions between and conflict within such groups also feature in this indispensable volume.