About the author:
Charles Lister was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. He is Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. His research focused on terrorism, insurgency and sub-state security threats across the Middle East in general, and the Levant in particular. Recently, his work has been nearly exclusively focused on assessing the status of the conflict in Syria, especially the makeup of the anti-government insurgency and its various jihadi components. This has included a significant program of face-to-face engagement with the leadership of over 100 opposition groups from across the entire Syrian spectra.
First: the most important points the author presented about his book:
Middle East Institute held a “scientific symposium about the book that was issued at the end of 2015 (in the aftermath of the Russian intervention in Syria; the author talked about the most important points in his book and he answered the audience’s questions about the Russian book)
The researcher emphasized that Syria has become a stronghold of “the international Sunni Jihadist” groups which he defines as those groups with aspirations and international agendas, not limited to the national and local Syrian agendas.
