Abu Muqawama: In Syria, a Quick, Decisive Outcome is Unlikely

A few weeks ago, I met a friend from Damascus for coffee. He had just arrived from Syria a few weeks earlier, and I was curious to hear how he was adjusting to life in the United States.

We had been talking for about half an hour when our conversation turned back to what my friend had left behind in Syria. And as my neighbors walked by our local coffeeshop en route home from work on a lovely spring day in Washington, my friend related to me in graphic detail how, last summer, he had been arrested, detained and repeatedly tortured for three days by the security services of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ...