Sumario: | The Syrian civil war and the humanitarian catastrophe it has produced constitute the most urgent geopolitical crisis of the twenty-first century. For the last six years, we have been confronted with images of colossal human suffering and a moral dilemma that remains unresolved, with no end in sight. Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the intellectual voice of the Syrian revolution, describes with precision and fervour the events that led to the uprising of 2011, the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war, and the "three monsters" Saleh sees "treading on Syria's corpse": the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and the West. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assad's army is now battling religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory, democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is beset on all sides. A leftist dissident who spent sixteen years as a political prisoner and now lives in exile, Saleh offers powerful and compelling critiques of the impact of the revolution and war on Syrian governance, identity and society.
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