Arab Fling

Paul Wood wrote for the January-February issue of the Washington Monthly about the meddling by Syria's neighbors - and how they made Syria's civil war worse:

A dozen men climbed single file up a steep slope covered in shale. Each footfall sent down a stream of rocks. They were Syrians, going home to join the armed uprising. The Lebanese border town below was hazy in the dusk, and from it the wind carried a distant pop: the Ramadan cannon, fired to tell the people they could eat. It was the first night of the holy month of fasting, prayer—and battle. We had heard talk of a big rebel offensive during Ramadan. Ramadan was a good time to fight, people said: Ramadan would see the end of the regime. I fell into step with a skinny kid wearing glasses, called Ali. He was eighteen and was supposed to be in Jordan, where his parents had sent him to avoid the war. They thought he was still there, studying computer science. He hadn’t told them he was on his way to Damascus to help overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. “I am ready to die for that,” he said.

This was August 2012, the second summer of a war now in its sixth year. As a journalist, I explained the war as the outcome of countless individual choices made by Syrians like Ali. That is only half the story. Christopher Phillips tells the other half in his new book, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the Middle East. Phillips, a university lecturer and associate at Chatham House in London, writes that outside powers “played a major role in escalating the uprising into a civil war. . . . [T]he policies pursued by regional and international actors shaped its character and, importantly, ensured that it continued.” His is an account of what six nations did in Syria: Iran and Russia, with the regime; and Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, with the rebels. After six years of war, it is an important book. As Phillips says, these countries are stained with Syrian blood.