Syria

Syria's descent into civil war has already claimed an estimated 200,000 lives while more than nine million people have fled their homes. This is now the greatest humanitarian and political crisis of the twenty-first century.
In this timely account, John McHugo charts the history of Syria from the First World War to the present and considers why Syria's foundations as a nation have proved so fragile. He examines the country's thwarted attempts at independence under French rule before turning to more recent events: sectarian tensions, the pressures of international conflicts, two generations of rule by the Assads and the rise of ISIS.
As the conflict in Syria rages on, McHugo provides a rare and authoritative guide to a complex nation that demands our attention.

After studying Arabic and Islamic studies at Oxford University and the American University in Cairo in the early 1970s, John McHugo's career as an international lawyer took him to a number of Arab countries including Egypt, Oman and Bahrain over a period of more than a quarter of a century. He is an honorary Senior Fellow at the Centre for Syrian Studies at St Andrews, and a board member of the Council for Arab-British Understanding and the British Egyptian Society. He has also written on legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli dispute and advised Tim Farron, when he was leader of the Liberal Democrats, on Palestinian issues. His publications include A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is, A Concise History of the Arabs and Syria: A Recent History.