The Blood Between Us: Syria After the Fall of Assad

On his way to the airport to leave Damascus, Robin Yassin-Kassab’s car is stopped at a checkpoint by a guard who is friendly, briefly checks the boot and then waves them through. Yassin-Kassab was visiting the new Syria under the transitional government, and his driver told him that under Bashar Al-Assad there had been six checkpoints operated by different security agencies on the route to the airport. You had no way of knowing who you might come across or if any of them would take you away. Now there is one checkpoint and the guards are polite. Yassin-Kassab writes: “Friendly checkpoints are most definitely better than terrifying checkpoints, and one checkpoint is better than six. The difference between this year and last is the difference between the earth and the skies. But still a checkpoint remains to be dismantled.”

The Blood Between Us: Syria After the Fall of Assad is Robin Yassin-Kassab’s account of his travels in, and analysis of, the new Syria. The book has bleak parts covering events such as the March 2025 coastal massacre against Alawites and the July 2025 massacre of Druze in Suwayda, but it also has many hopeful moments, including elections and civil society initiatives. But fundamentally, the book is not purely musings on where Syria is going; if read closely, it is a subtle call to action. 

Syria is a pluralistic society, and the pressure of the 2011 revolution was towards democratisation. Syria can still fulfil this desire. Indeed, as Yassin-Kassab observes throughout the book, there are many indicators of Syria’s democratisation, but he is clear-eyed about the challenges, and critical, honest and nuanced about what is unfolding in the Mediterranean country. Whether optimistic or pessimistic, Yassin-Kassab dismantles simplistic thinking and offers concrete analysis.

Like most Syrians and observers of Syria, Yassin-Kassab did not expect the Assad regime to collapse when it did. As he recounts, on Friday 29 November 2024, he and his family were in Edinburgh for the day visiting the oddly appropriate Museum of Illusions. While he was walking through a swirling light vortex installation and losing his balance, events in Syria were taking a sharp turn. A rebel offensive that had begun a few days before had captured the city of Aleppo and driven the Assad regime into retreat. 

When he arrived home, Yassin-Kassab heard the news and, like many, was in a state of disbelief: “Like most Syrians, however near or far they were from Syria, I’d spent most of the previous decade absorbing the fact the Syrian Revolution had been defeated…Now, as I watched videos of men and women running through the open gates of Aleppo’s prisons, I thought of the multiverse theory…Tonight it felt like not only I but all of us had jumped from one existence into a parallel universe, one which a lot more was possible.”

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In some ways, this is a key message of the book. Syria defies expectation, and it remains a place where more is possible than meets the eye. “The change was radical and total. Nothing like it had happened before in the Arab World. Against all odds, it was the most successful, most thorough revolution of the twenty-first century.”

 But as Yassin-Kassab observes, the new Syria is still afflicted by old wounds, and trauma still runs through society. Sectarianism remains an issue in the country, and it has led to catastrophic events, including two major massacres and a number of violent incidents. 

Unlike some, Yassin-Kassab does not essentialise the sectarian violence; he does not see it as centuries in the making, and he demonstrates the ways in which sectarianism was utilised in recent history, from the French mandate to the Assad regime. Understanding this history and addressing the problem is essential for building a Syria for all Syrians. 

The new Syria offers the possibility for this type of dialogue to happen, as Yassin-Kassab’s conversations with other Syrians reveal. In one conversation, a man tells Yassin-Kassab that there is now a situation where people from different sects are sitting together and openly talking about their experiences. This would not have been possible in 2024 under the old regime.

The Blood Between Us blends personal memoir with sobering analysis of the first year of a country in transition. It makes for a thoughtful reflection on both the hopes and fears of millions of people. It doesn’t offer simple answers, but it does give us very real reasons to pay close attention to what unfolds there. Syria is a place where hope and despair, trauma and resilience brush up against one another, and I can think of no book that captures this quite like The Blood Between Us.

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