Syria Burning: a short history of a catastrophe
CHARLES GLASS

Burning country: Syrians in revolution and war
ROBIN YASSIN-KASSAB AND LEILA AL-SHAMI

A mark of lazy journalism is a tendency to say one war is just like another, better-known war. Journalists descending on Bosnia in the 1990s were fond of venturing that the Yugoslav War resembled the Spanish Civil War – with which it had almost nothing in common.

But Charles Glass argues that oft-made comparisons between the war in Syria and the Thirty Years’ War are an example of a cliché that has something to it. As in mid-seventeenth-century Germany, the conflict in Syria is several wars wrapped into one. The suburban proletariat is at war with the state and its urban middle-class backers, hard-line Sunnis are waging a holy war against all the rest and an assortment of outside powers are fighting proxy wars with each other.