BY MIKE THOMSON. Public Affairs, 2019, 320 pp.<\/strong><\/p>\nThese two books offer wildly contrasting portrayals of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the hugely destruc\u00adtive civil war that has raged in Syria since 2011. Dagher started reporting from Damascus for The Wall Street Journal in 2012. He interviewed key actors and dissidents, among them Manaf Tlass, once a close friend of the ruling Assad family. Manaf\u2019s father was a regime stalwart, a longtime defense minister, and a key liaison between the Alawite Assads and the majority Sunni population of Syria. Manaf eventually defected from the regime after Assad brutally suppressed the largely Sunni opposition. Dagher tells a story of paranoia and unbridled violence. He is unequivocal in his condemnation of the Assad regime and catalogs the world\u2019s acquiescence in the regime\u2019s brutality, enabled in part by the focus on battling the Islamic State (or isis). Dagher interviewed some survivors of Assad\u2019s torture centers, who afford hope for a better future, but otherwise, this book chronicles the triumph of evil.<\/p>\n
Some of those torture survivors are the subject of Thomson\u2019s moving chroni\u00adcle of the four-year siege of Daraya, a suburb of Damascus that was once home to 90,000 people. Thomson, a BBC correspondent, learned that among those who remained in the suburb were a num\u00adber of young Darayans who collected books to establish a secret, underground library, sheltered from the barrel bombs, snipers, and tanks of Assad\u2019s forces. The library became the embodiment of both resistance and the hope for a more humane future. Thomson never visited Daraya and knew his heroes only through Skype and WhatsApp. Still, he became fast friends with the insurgent librarians. Rebels in Daraya held out for four years, enduring famine and trauma. In the summer of 2016, they were evacuated by the regime to Idlib prov\u00adince, which itself is now under attack by Assad\u2019s forces. Syrian troops unearthed and looted the secret library.<\/p>\n
Bashar al-Assad in 2011. It takes some mental gymnastics to see how Hezbollah\u2019s role in Syria either mounts resistance to Israel or defends the territory of Leba\u00adnon. Daher has spent years in the Bekaa Valley close to Hezbollah strongholds. Her portrayal of the organization is rather sympathetic. The book\u2019s strongest feature is its analysis of the charismatic appeal of Hezbollah\u2019s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. Daher\u2019s superficial treatment of the organization\u2019s finances\u2014 and the group\u2019s consequent ability to eschew corruption and rent seeking\u2014is less satisfying. The author refutes accusa\u00adtions of terrorism leveled at Hezbollah, particularly the findings of the interna\u00adtional tribunal that investigated the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. She challenges the evidence that Hezbollah was behind this killing and other violent incidents.<\/p>\n
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“Immortalizing the Voiceless,” by Mike Thomson, BBC World Affairs Correspondent, Presenter and Author 21 September 2022 | 3:30-5:00 pm CT (Check for local time here: https:\/\/www.worldtimebuddy.com\/) School of Information Sciences building, Room 126, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign AND online (Refreshments to follow: 5:00-5:45 pm) Moderated by Melita Garza, Associate Professor and Tom and June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4877","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4877"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5312,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4877\/revisions\/5312"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}