r. Tarif Bakdash was born in 1965 in Damascus, Syria. Dr. Bakdash left Syria for the United States. In 2001, President Assad invited Dr. Bakdash back to Syria to teach at the University of Damascus, While teaching at the University of Damascus. In 2004, he served as the Academic Coordinator for the World Health Organization of the United Nations in Damascus. From 2007 to 2010, he was the Services Director and later the National Plan Director for the Syrian Organization for the Disabled (AAMAL), working closely with the First Lady of Syria, Asma al-Assad a collaboration that led to his government appointment as the first Secretary General for the Disabled in Syria. Dr. Bakdash left Syria in 2010 to work as a pediatric neurologist at St. Vincent s Hospital in Billings, Montana. From 2010 to 2012, he worked as the medical director of child neurology at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri from 2012-2014. In October, 2014 (after the completing the first draft of this book), he became an Associate Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Children s Hospital of Wisconsin. Dr. Bakdash hopes to use his memomemoir to begin an ethical discussion to help change the deadly cycle of dictatorship, religious intolerance, and war that have defined Syria and the world, that values tolerance over intolerance, democracy over abuse of power, and peace over war.

"Inside Syria - A Physician’s Memoir by Tarif Bakdash, MD, is authentic and brave and from the heart. —Stephen Fife "