Sam Dagher, "Assad or We Burn the Country"

Sam Dagher discusses his book, "Assad or We Burn the Country", at Politics and Prose at Union Market.

The only Western journalist based in Damascus from 2012 to 2014, Dagher, who has reported from the Middle East for more than fifteen years—most recently for The Atlantic—shows in chilling detail how what began as a regional struggle during the Arab Spring of 2011 has grown into an explosive global crisis. Drawing on exclusive access to Assad’s former ally, the Syrian army commander Manaf Tlass, Dagher takes readers inside the highest levels of the Syrian government, profiling the ruling families and the roots of their determination to destroy the country rather than yield power.

Sam Dagher has reported in the Middle East for more than fifteen years, most recently for The Atlantic. He was the only non-Syrian reporter for a major Western media outlet based in Damascus from 2012 to 2014, a period during which he was arrested by a pro Assad militia and briefly held in an underground mukhabarat (secret police) prison. He was later expelled from Syria for reporting deemed unfavorable to the regime. He has worked for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Agence France Presse, and has covered the conflict in Iraq, the Arab Spring uprisings, and Libya. The Wall Street Journal nominated Dagher's work from Syria for the Pulitzer Prize and other journalism awards.

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Produced by Tom Warren