The Terror & The Resistance: On War, Terror, and Horror

In the aftermath of losing his fiancée and parents, murdered by bullet and by bomb, Ibrahim al-Liban is maimed by his losses, transforming him from civilian to militant to revolutionary. Waging war against the terrorists in Syria's west, he enters the barbarity of the Syrian civil war. Structured as a speech, memoir, and interview, The Terror & The Resistance explores al-Liban's mindset, in his embrace of violence and war. Though he clothes his violence in God and nation and glory, we are confronted with the reality of his war, in the untold horrors a soul wades into when choosing to fight.

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After executing his fiancée's killer in America, in a brutal act of vigilante violence, Ibrahim al-Liban flees to his homeland of Lebanon. There, he is confronted by tragedy once more. Himself injured in a car bombing, the attack tragically kills his mother and father. In the aftermath, he is left alone. In this lonesome, he chooses to fight and declares war on the terrorists who carried out the bombing. Reconnecting with two childhood friends, now soldiers in the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah, he creates a new militant group: The Resistance. It is founded on a nationalist creed, dedicated to the destruction of terror. Their first act is the execution of a radical cleric in Lebanon's east, detailed in grisly detail and the genesis of his "movement." Then, with the American hand, they move into Syria and begin their war on the borderlands, occupying the territories and then having to govern those unforgiving lands.

In his war, al-Liban wades into the madness and terror and horror of the Syrian civil war. An alternate history, the novel brings to life the political and moral dynamics of the conflict, in the barbarity and savagery seen in that war, things al-Liban succumbs to. In the story, we see the breakdown of his own morality and how gives himself to the conflict -- in want of victory and nothing else. His beliefs are taken to their extreme. Accordingly, everything breaks down.