9781422284445

A member of the Free Syrian Army stands in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, in 2014. Since 2011, Syria has been engaged in a civil war between rebel and government forces. By February 2015, more than 220,000 peo- ple had been killed in the conflict.

I n March of 2011, a group of Syrian students was arrested in the southern city of Daraa for writing political graffiti on walls, including the statement “Down with the regime.” The students were inspired by protests in other Middle Eastern countries that had begun a few months earlier, aimed at improving the political circumstances and living conditions of the Arab people. It was perhaps not surprising that the Arab Spring protests should spread to the Syrian Arab Republic. It was also not surpris- ing that the students would soon be arrested and jailed by Syrian authorities. Over the past 40 years, Syria has gained a reputation as one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world. R EPRESSIVE R ULE IN S YRIA Syria rests on the far eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea in an region sometimes called the Levant, from a French word meaning “sunrise.” To people in the Mediterranean region, the day dawns Syria’s Place in the World

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