Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (31 page)

Minister of Justice Najm al-Ahmad denies that the Syrian government ever used chemical weapons, claiming they were used only by the rebels.

Dr. Wafaa Dieb stands in front of a statue of Hafez al-Assad in Tartus. At the beginning of the uprising, the mainly Alawite residents of Tartus rallied in favor of the government and against tearing down Hafez al-Assad's statue.

A
Mukhabarat
(secret police) member worried that photographing this breadline in western Syria would show the regime in a negative light. The government provided subsidized bread, and sometimes the lines got long.

Rana Isa, owner of a public-relations company in Damascus, says big-business men strongly supported the government because Bashar al-Assad had adopted probusiness policies since the early 2000s.

During a 2011 visit to Damascus's famous
souk
, or marketplace, business had dried up.

In the Damascus souk, this shopkeeper displays his inlaid boxes but says foreign customers, his usual clients, have stopped coming.

Bishop Armash Nalbandian of the Armenian Orthodox Church says protestors originally had legitimate democratic demands but extremist rebels have taken over. He supports the Assad government.

Clerics attend the funeral of Armenian children killed by a rebel mortar that hit a Christian school in Damascus.

Iranians gather for Friday prayers in Tehran. Iran strongly supports Assad because of his opposition to the United States and Israel.

A young girl in Moqebleh, a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq. Kurds have long opposed the Assad regime but are also wary of the Islamist opposition.

Author Reese Erlich interviews Syrian Kurdish refugee Barkhodan Balo in the Moqebleh camp in northern Iraq. Balo and most Kurds want greater rights for Kurds within the Syrian state.

A watchtower overlooks the Golan. Arabs living in the occupied Golan overwhelmingly support its return to Syria, although the civil war has put any future settlement on the back burner.

Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian political leader, says the Israel lobby had a significant defeat in 2013 when it couldn't pressure Congress to support bombing Syria.

While writing is a solitary task, producing a book is a collective effort. Numerous people helped me shape the original proposal, provided vital research, read over draft chapters, and offered moral encouragement as the deadline loomed.

Laura Gross, my book agent, offered invaluable suggestions on how to take a good idea and turn it into a book people might want to actually read. Steven L. Mitchell, editor in chief at Prometheus Books, offered a fresh perspective and made important suggestions for the manuscript. I offer special thanks to Noam Chomsky, who took time out of his busy schedule to write the foreword.

Charlie Sennott and Kevin Grant at
Global Post
published my writings from ten countries in the Middle East and helped deepen my understanding of the complex religious conflicts in the region. Tom Hundley and Nathalie Applewhite of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting were quite patient with my sometimes-last-minute phone calls asking for travel grants. The center enabled me to report from six countries in the Middle East, including two trips to Syria.

Numerous people were kind enough to read individual chapters and offer helpful suggestions. These include: Professor James Gelvin, UCLA; Professor Muhammad Sahimi, USC; Professor Soraya Fallah, California State University, Northridge; Professor Amir Sharifi, California State University, Long Beach; Kelly Niknejad, editor of Tehran Bureau; Meghan Sayres; and Bisher Alisa, Syrian Non Violent Movement.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Liz Erlich, and son, Jason Erlich, for their moral support and encouragement during the researching and writing of this book. As for their concerns about my physical safety, I assured them that I travel only to the safest parts of dangerous countries.