An American in the Den of Assad

Now that the Syrian army is waging a scorched earth campaign against civilians as well as dissident rebels, Andrew Tabler can count himself lucky. He managed to live and work in Damascus for years and even got to know the Assad family back when that was still possible. And the much-feared Palestine branch of military intelligence ran him out of the country before all this mayhem broke out.

In the meantime he landed himself a job at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and wrote a...