Carsten Wieland is a political consultant and journalist, specialising in the middle east. His latest book is A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring (Cune Press, 2012). He studied history, political science, international relations and philosophy at Humboldt University (Berlin), Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and Duke University (North Carolina), before working as a research fellow at Georgetown University (Washington). He is the author of Syria - Ballots or Bullets? Democracy, Islamism and Secularism in the Levant (CUNE Press, 2006) and Syria at Bay: Secularism, Islamism and ‘Pax Americana' (C Hurst, 2005). His website is here