The Regime is Inside Us: Travels and Conversations in the New Syria
Theresa Thornhill
On 8 December 2024, Syria’s fifty-four year dictatorship ended when the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) arrived in Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow. A month later, Ahmed al Shara’a, HTS’ leader and a one-time member of al Qaeda, declared himself interim President and set about the task of creating a ‘new’ Syria out of the ruins of his battered, war-ravaged country.
The Regime is Inside Us will be based on my current and future travels through Syria, in which I visit historic sites from antiquity, rural villages and modern cities. Using my reasonably fluent Syrian Arabic, I seek out people from every sect and ethnicity and get them talking. My central questions are very simple: how are people feeling, and faring, in the wake of 14 years of war? I insert historical background as and when it’s needed to make sense of my encounters. I also put my questions to a handful of Syrians still living as refugees in the UK and Germany.
Book Details:
- Author: Theresa Thornhill
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Theresa Thornhill
Teresa Thornhill is a writer, painter and retired child protection barrister with a special interest in the Middle East. She volunteered with Palestinians in the West Bank in the late 1980s and has since spent time in and written about post civil war Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan and the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ as it affected Syrian refugees passing through Greece. She’s currently working on a book about the new, post-Assad Syria.
Teresa is fascinated by the history and politics of the Levant. She has good colloquial Arabic and enjoys spending time with people from all walks of ...
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