Syria’s Future Dependent on Past

By Charles Kestenbaum

Kestenbaum served 24 years in the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service at U.S. Embassies in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia, and supervised the 1991 Rebuild Kuwait program for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kestenbaum also has served as commercial liaison office director in the U.S. executive director’s office at the World Bank. He has negotiated trade agreements; counseled U.S. and international companies on all aspects of establishing and running businesses in the region; run trade shows and exhibitions in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, and Baghdad; and conducted extensive market research throughout the region. Since leaving government work in 2002, Kestenbaum has been a Middle East business consultant to Fortune 500 companies, has established several security companies in Iraq, and has worked as a director of business development for a leading international risk management and investigation firm. Kestenbaum has done postgraduate research at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He holds a master’s degree from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and earned a B.A. in Arabic Studies from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He speaks Arabic, Indonesian, and French.

SPECIAL TO THE CIPHER BRIEF — There is vast confusion, and much existential angst about the future of the Middle East region if the U.S. withdraws its military presence from Eastern Syria. What is missing from most available expert analysis of the Syrian conflict is historic context. It is a region where the major monotheistic religions were born and where often violent tribal, ethnic, and sectarian conflicts have prevailed for thousands of years.

To predict what will occur in the Syrian conflict we must first understand the dynamics of the region, including its history. How did it come to the present complex situation? Few of the expert analysis being offered provide this essential context.

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