Patrick Costello on Syria
It Started in Damascus by Rime Allaf published by Hurst
My Struggle for Syria by Bassma Kodmani published by I.B.Tauris
Inevitably, there has been a flurry of new books on Syria published since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. These two, both planned and mostly written when the possibility of overthrowing Assad looked impossibly remote, are the best of the crop for those interested in understanding the nature of both the Assad regime and the evolving nature of the opposition to it. In different ways, both books offer something rare: an insider’s view communicated by outsiders. Outsiders as women in an opposition movement dominated by men, but also as Western-educated progressive exiles. Insiders, as both authors, through their diplomat fathers, had a privileged understanding of the regime, and both were, in different ways, active participants in the Syrian opposition. As a result, these books are able to communicate powerfully to a non-Syrian audience.
The similarities end there as these are very different, if in some ways complementary, accounts. Rime Allaf’s book is an engaging narrative account of the Assad regime, father and son, and the way in which civilian opposition was brutally targeted and repressed. It goes on to the fatal decision by the less intelligent son, Bashar, to use the full force of the army against civilians and the failure of the international community to come to their aid, even when chemical weapons were used against Syrian communities in the countryside surrounding Damascus. Allaf reserves a particular contempt for those in the Western left who supported Assad as the enemy of the US, turning a blind eye to the massacres. The story is a well-known one, but what makes this a particularly vivid account is the honest and personal anecdotes from her pre-war visits to Damascus that provide readers with a sense of what living under the Assad regime was like. Her willingness to make small personal stands against the dictatorship, to the horror of her family, rings true and introduces a self-deprecating humour into the tragedy.
She is less good on the complexities of the Syrian opposition, and there is nothing here on the tensions and at times live conflicts between secular democrats, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurds and the Salafi jihadis that at different moments jeopardised the opposition’s ability to pursue a united strategy. There is also no mention of the way that the regional and international supporters of the opposition exacerbated these tensions by supporting different opposition factions and armed groups, turning Syria into the site of multiple proxy wars. This is where Bassma Kodmani’s book comes into its own. Bassma was a leading figure in the opposition. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the male-dominated nature of Syrian society, she would most likely have been running it. A shrewd strategist, I remember her being behind the successful plan to expel Syria from the Arab League in 2011, when her focus was on seeking to generate fractures in and defections from the Alawi governing elite. At that stage, she wanted, above all, to avoid a civil war.
Kodmani’s book is a difficult but rewarding read. She tragically died of cancer in 2023 before she was able to complete it, and what is published here is compiled from the papers she left behind, with her words unedited. Much of it reads like it was written on the hoof as she travelled the globe in the elusive search for support for a negotiated peace. In it, she is brutally honest about her internal fights with the Muslim Brotherhood, which started from the creation of the first coalition of the opposition in 2011. She also writes in detail about the tactical twists and turns of the Geneva negotiations, and of her numerous efforts to persuade the Russians that a negotiated political solution was in their interest. At the end, she sketches out how she saw a viable post-Assad transition working: the clarity and acuity of this outline is a poignant reminder of how much she is missed in today’s Syria. She certainly would have had an important role today, strengthening the hand of secular democrats in shaping the future of the country.
Throughout the book, Kodmani demonstrates just how difficult it is for women to play an effective role in political organisations and how that, in turn, always leads to worse outcomes. As she puts it, “the fact that the Arab world excludes women is a contributory factor to the failure of the region to find ways out of its intractable conflicts”. It is a testament to just how remarkable Bassma was that she was able to exert such a sustained influence within the Syrian opposition for more than a decade.