Syria is quite an enigma from the outside. Very rarely in the news, either for positive or negative reasons, all you tend to hear about it is what emanates occasionally from the White House - and that's that it's a dangerous, terrorist breeding ground, or that it's a land of religious zealots and extremists. At best, it's said to be profoundly anti-western, pro-Islamic and particularly anti-American. The net result of all this means that there is barely an Am...

Syria is quite an enigma from the outside. Very rarely in the news, either for positive or negative reasons, all you tend to hear about it is what emanates occasionally from the White House - and that's that it's a dangerous, terrorist breeding ground, or that it's a land of religious zealots and extremists. At best, it's said to be profoundly anti-western, pro-Islamic and particularly anti-American. The net result of all this means that there is barely an Am...