In her role as a scholar and researcher, Jennifer Dueck, the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in the Modern History of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Manitoba, notes that she has been travelling to Syria every year since 2004.
She was last there in March, 2011 at the beginning of the current political unrest in that dictatorial Arab republic – one that borders Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest.
JENNIFER DUECK