Tag Archives: Christians

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

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

Film Review: The Islamic State (2014) by Vice News

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 25, 2014

Abu Mosa, the Islamic State's press officer

Abu Mosa, the Islamic State’s press officer

This is an extraordinary piece of work from Vice News. Earlier this month they released a five-part film after one of their journalists, Medyan Dairieh, embedded with the Islamic State (I.S.), formerly ISIS, in Raqqa City, the de facto headquarters of I.S. in north-eastern Syrian. It’s an extraordinarily brave thing to do given the number of journalists I.S. has kidnapped, the number of journalists killed in Syria (at least sixty), and of course the penchant of the Zarqawi’ites for beheading Westerners on video, as gruesomely underlined again with the murder of James Foley. Continue reading