By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 November 2025
Can Syria’s Future Escape Ahmad al-Shara’s Past?
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Tag Archives: Alawites
How Much Responsibility Does the Syrian State Have for the Alawi Massacres?
Will Trump Succeed in Withdrawing From Syria This Time?
The Alawi Massacres in Syria: A Blip or a Rubicon?
Visiting Post-Revolutionary Syria
Should Syria’s New Rulers Be on the Terrorism List?
The Evidence is Now Clear: Iran Was Behind Every Aspect of the October 7 Pogrom in Israel
What To Do About Syria: Sectarianism And The Minorities
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 24, 2014
The Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs in Raqqa City
In the last few days I’ve been asked a lot about my longstanding view that the beginning of a Western strategy in Syria is the removal of Bashar al-Assad. The question has come from various angles and been phrased in various ways but it always boils down to: “What comes next?”
The best response I have seen to this comes from Thomas Nichols: “When someone says ‘tell me how it ends,’ it’s another way of saying: ‘I just don’t happen to like this particular case for intervention,’ for whatever reason.” Continue reading
Will The Alawis Break With Assad?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 12, 2014
A grisly brood: The Assad family
Last Thursday, in Akrama, an Alawi section of Homs City, there was the most extraordinary scene: Alawite anti-Assad protests. A twin bombing at a local school—reported as a suicide bombing by the regime, though there is no evidence for this—had massacred fifty Alawi civilians, most of them pupils. Annexing the slogans of the revolution, the Alawis took to the streets to demand the removal of Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi. “The people want to topple the governor,” people shouted, a conscious echo of the “Arab Spring” chant, a-shab yurid izkat an-nizam (the people want to topple the regime). Continue reading
Ghouta: One Year On
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 21, 2014
Some of the children killed by the Assad regime’s CW attack on Aug. 21, 2013
Can it really be twelve whole months since Bashar al-Assad gassed to death more than 1,400 people in a morning? I happened to be in London when the attack on the Damascus suburbs of Ghouta took place, exactly a year ago. London has become (in)famous recently for mass-protests that throw around the word “genocide”—against Israel’s (in my view ill-thought out) recent response to HAMAS’ rocket fire. London had no time for Syria’s grief: Continue reading
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