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Syria and Turkey commentary

Archive for the tag “Syria”

06 Nov 2013
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#Syria’s oil and gas potential in the Eastern Mediterranean is wasted, while Israel’s thrives

Unintended irony in the caption beside Bashar: 'God is Syria's Protector'

Unintended irony in the caption beside Bashar: ‘God is Syria’s Protector’

No one mentions it much, but Syria, according to the specialist Oil & Gas Journal in Jan 2013, has the largest proved reserve of crude oil in the Eastern Mediterranean. Other lucky beneficiaries are Israel, Cyprus and Lebanon, all with large reserves of oil and gas. The gas reserves in this underwater Levant Basin are so huge the estimates say they would supply all of Europe’s gas demand for 7 years.

Yet while Israel has already started production from its Tamar gas field, and the huge Leviathan field is on course to follow in 2016/2017, and while Cyprus is also gearing up for its share and discussing shared export arrangements with Israel so both countries can benefit, neither Lebanon nor Syria, locked in conflict, can make any headway with exploiting these potential riches.

Western oil companies abandoned exploration operations because of political stalemate, but even now, after two and a half years of war, Syria’s government was still in April 2013 (according to a Congressional Research Service report) in discussion with Russia and China over offshore oil exploration. Syria is also said to have oil shale reserves estimated up to 50 billion tons. Russia’s state-owned energy companies have a huge stake in the Damascus regime’s survival so they can continue to profit from Syria’s oil and gas reserves, so Russia’s interest in maintaining the status quo with Assad in charge is clear. There is too much to lose, and it also wants to thwart Israel’s plans to build an undersea pipeline to Turkey, the obvious way to export oil and gas to Turkey (and thence to Europe) while excluding Iran and Russia, the two current supplier’s of Turkey’s energy needs. This also explains Obama’s instruction to Israel in March 2013 to apologise to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident, so that diplomatic ties between Israel and Turkey could be restored. America wants its ally Israel to be able to export oil and gas to Turkey. The longer Lebanon and Syria take to sort themselves out vis-a vis oil exploration and production in the Eastern Mediterranean, the better, from the US point of view.

The conclusion?  There is no incentive for the US to end the Syrian war now that the chemical weapons issue is sorted, as they want no interference in Israel’s ability to export from its Eastern Mediterranean reserves. And there is no incentive for Russia to end the Syrian war while it can still benefit from Syria’s potential Eastern Mediterranean reserves in future, since Bashar is now solely dependent on Russia (and possibly China) for future exploration and production.

The Syrian people do not feature in this equation, as usual.

Related articles:

http://www.ibtimes.com/syria-losing-out-huge-reserves-oil-natural-gas-eastern-mediterranean-sea-while-cyprus-israel-get

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22509295

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/31/turkey-israel-gas-idUKL5N0IK3MF20131031

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2013/10/02/Slow-progress-in-Israel-Turkey-talks-threatens-gas-pipeline-plan/UPI-65691380733010/

http://www.energy-pedia.com/news/israel/new-155694

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

Posted in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and tagged , , , , , , , ,
02 Oct 2013

Chink of Light in #Syria?

Aleppo citadel at night, July 2010 [DD]

Aleppo citadel at night, July 2010 [DD]

The speed at which things can happen once there is international consensus is remarkable. UN Chemical Weapons inspectors are already in Syria just days after the UN Security Council agreed unanimously last week to dismantle the country’s chemical weapons arsenal. They are working to a strict timetable and have just till November to complete their work.

Seven out of the 19 chemical weapons sites which they will be inspecting are, according to the Syrian government (which provided the list of sites) in rebel-held or contested combat zones. Here is the possible chink of light.

Ceasefires will have to be negotiated to enable the UN inspectors to pass through these combat zones to reach these seven sites to verify them and make assessments. The wording of the new UN Resolution makes it clear that action will be taken against anyone – regime or rebels – found to be obstructing the UN inspectors’ work. Such a situation forces compliance and cooperation on all sides and may be the start of a new dynamic on the ground.

So what if consensus can be achieved now, not just on chemical weapons, but on another issue of pressing concern – the need to expel from Syria the recently-formed foreign extremist Islamist groups? Parties involved in the conflict – both inside and outside the country – are increasingly concerned about the rise and rise of such foreign-funded, foreign-composed extremist groups such as ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Shaam), which are intent on imposing their vision of an Islamic state on Syrian citizens the overwhelming majority of whom do not want this. Many feel their revolution has been hijacked by these Islamist groups. Some who began by supporting them because they were better funded and better organised than other rebels, now regret their early enthusiasm. After experiencing the reality of life under such radical groups in places like Ar-Raqqa and around Aleppo, they now want to distance themselves and return to something more moderate. 99% of Syrian citizens don’t want them, the Assad regime doesn’t want them, the moderate opposition groups don’t want them, the US, Russia, Israel and European countries don’t want them, seeing them as a greater threat to world stability than either the Syrian regime or the moderate Syrian rebels – it’s beginning to look like another consensus.

On that basis, with the political will, a ceasefire could even be agreed in time for the upcoming Eid Al-Adha on 14 October, marking the end of the pilgrimage season. Over-optimistic perhaps, given it will take time to drive out the extremist fighters even if the regime and the moderate groups were to unite to achieve it. But once there is consensus, remarkable things can happen very quickly, as we have just witnessed.

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28 Sep 2013
4 Comments

#Syria’s opposition groups – do their ever-changing dynamics matter?

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus {DD}

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus {DD}

Arguments will rage about numbers of fighters belonging to this or that group in Syria’s opposition rebels and about who is allied to whom. But does it really matter?

Western analysts are obsessed with putting rebel groups into boxes and labelling them. Are they linked to Al Qa’ida is always the first question? Are they jihadis?  What is their ideology? How Islamist are they? But it has become increasingly difficult to determine accurate numbers, as allegiances are shifting all the time,  new groups are emerging or blending with others. The IHS Jane’s analyst Charles Lister thinks there are up to a thousand rebel groups who together make up a body of some 100,000 opposition fighters. He categorises only 30-40,000 of them as moderates. Other sources put the figures higher, at 120-150,000 opposition fighters, with around 50,000 of them categorised as Free Syrian Army fighters. By these sorts of reckonings something between a third and a half of the fighters are moderates, which means that something between two thirds and a half are labelled extremists.

But how meaningful are these distinctions? As more and more stories come out via journalists who spend time embedded with various rebel groups, a common thread is emerging. Many moderate fighters in the so-called extremist groups like Jabhat An-Nusra are fighting to free Syria from the Assad regime. They will join whichever group is the most effective and best-funded to achieve that end. If that means growing a beard and adopting Islamist names and slogans, so be it. There is also the important fact that these extremists groups in the north have seized much of the country’s oil, gas and grain supplies in Syria’s northeast  Jezira region and can therefore distribute them to ‘loyal subjects.’ But such allegiances are temporary and are based on the economics of war. Very few such fighters and local residents are likely to remain ‘extreme Islamists’ after the objective has been achieved. The vast majority will revert to their previous moderate positions once a charade of extremism is no longer necessary.

The most interesting development of recent days has been the increasingly vocal rejection by the Syrian Coalition and by other opposition fighters inside Syria of the behaviour and ideology of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Shaam, the new extremist group which emerged in spring this year. Its summary executions, seizing of churches as military headquarters and random slaughter of anyone who is not like them are drawing more and more criticism, not just from international commentators abroad, but also from Syrian opposition figures inside and outside the country.

All these developments lead me to hope that, in some future democratic system of free elections inside Syria, Syrians will finally be free to speak out against Islamic extremism and expel it from their country. By having a taste of the reality of an ISIS-led Islamic state in areas around Aleppo and Raqqa, Syrian citizens have seen for themselves how it works on the ground.

As for the recent announcement by the 11/13 rebel groups rejecting the leadership of the Syrian Coalition in exile, that too may be less significant than it first seems. The ever-shifting dynamics among rebel groups on the ground are clearly impossible for outside powers to control, but by the same token are equally difficult for the Assad regime to control, forcing it to realise it cannot win this fight. And that makes the chances of a UN-sponsored peace agreement infinitely more hopeful than before.

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Posted in Syria and tagged , , , , , , ,
19 Sep 2013
4 Comments

Revenge in Arab proverbs #Syria

Arab proverbs on revenge do not augur well for Syria’s future. There are many, but here are a few, to give a flavour:

Blood washes away blood

Vengeance erases shame

Break one jar of mine and I will break one hundred of yours

I looked for Arab proverbs on forgiveness and could only find one:

Only when the fault is forgotten is forgiveness complete

Reading Robert Fisk’s offering from Damascus today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/robert-fisk-in-damascus-assads-troops-may-be-winning-this-war-in-syrias-capital–untouched-by-obamas-threats-8825005.html

left me deeply troubled about where events are heading.

As the Turkish proverb says:

If you dig a grave for your neighbour, measure it for yourself

 

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Posted in Syria, Turkey and tagged , , , ,
13 Sep 2013

Analysis of a War Crime #Syria

If the negotiators in Geneva could be made to watch Channel 4’s footage tonight of the massacre at Al-Bayda I would defy them not to come up with a peace solution for Syria tomorrow. The cold-blooded, pre-meditated execution which the film documents is gut-wrenchingly chilling, mothers forced to watch their children being beheaded in front them, young children forced to watch their fathers’ throats slit. I could not stop crying. How can anyone who has witnessed such things go on to lead a normal life? How can they ever forgive the perpetrators? Putting myself in their shoes, I cannot begin to imagine how they can rebuild their lives.

Thank goodness for the dedication and determination of Human Rights Watch to pursue the facts behind such cases. The evidence that the massacre was carried out by regime soldiers aided by paramilitary shabiha on hundreds of civilian villagers is overwhelming, Human Rights Watch concludes. They are still working on proving it fulfilled the criteria of ‘ethnic cleansing’:

channel4.com/news/syria-al-…
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10 Sep 2013
2 Comments

Maa’loula Media War #Syria

Mar Serkis (St Sergius) Monastery dating to the 4th century, one of Syria's oldest still functioning churches [DD]

Mar Serkis (St Sergius) Monastery dating to the 4th century, one of Syria’s oldest still functioning churches [DD]

Why has Maa’loula, Syria’s most famous Christian village, suddenly found itself caught up in the Syrian war? Like most Christian villages, it has stayed neutral from the beginning, trying not to be drawn onto one side or the other. Why should it happen now?

Maa’loula is of no strategic interest to the rebels, set as it is in a cleft under a cliff with only one way in and out. Only the Qalamoun Mountains above the Christian town are of interest as strategic high ground from which to command surrounding areas. The regime has controlled a big and well-armed checkpoint at the entrance to Maa’loula for a long time, but last week it started firing up at rebel positions high above Maa’loula, provoking the rebel attack on the checkpoint. The regime then began shelling the town to displace the rebels, and the story hit the papers. Residents of Maa’loula were understandably frightened and distressed, feeling they had to leave and take shelter in Damascus. Conveniently, the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen had been given a regime-approved visa to be in Damascus, and was there to interview and film the fleeing Christians. Headlines across the world soon became ‘Christians in Maaloula forced to flee homes and houses looted by rebels.’ YouTube videos uploaded afterwards showed some damage to the Hotel Safir at the top of the cliff and to some residential buildings. The two famous monasteries were undamaged.

The facts here are strange for their timing. It is extremely lucky for the regime to have such headlines at present, to give weight to the anti-US intervention campaign, to make the rebels look as if they are targeting Christians. But why would the rebels do that? In the entire course of the Syrian civil war, the overwhelming majority of people killed have been Sunni Muslim. There have been no reciprocal massacres of Christians or Alawites by the rebels. If they had wanted to target Christians they could have done so months or even years ago, desecrating churches and knocking down crosses. Instead, many rebels have been actively helping Christians and protecting them wherever possible. In Qara, a little north of Maaloula the Christians are helping the rebels. In Homs the rebels are guarding the churches and the frescoes inside have not been damaged. Only the external fabric and the glass has been damaged by the regime shelling.

Church frescoes in Homs, Church of the Virgin's Belt [DD]

Church frescoes in Homs, Church of the Virgin’s Belt [DD]

They are even protecting the 35 or so Christian families who are still in Homs, too old or too poor to leave. But none of that makes headlines.

In Maaloula, beside the two famous monasteries of Mar Serkis and Mar Thekla, whose shrines are visited by Christians and Muslims alike in search of miraculous cures like a kind of ‘Lourdes’, there are 6 further churches and 2 mosques. The community is predominantly Christian but is also mixed. In Seydnayya, another famous monastery a little to the south just on the edge of the Qalamoun Mountains, the shrine is also visited by both Christians and Muslims, again seeking cures to illness and disease. In the town there are 13 further churches and 2 mosques. Two Christian women in the town are married to Muslim men. These communities have lived side by side for centuries.

Now however the regime is in a very tight spot, with the threat of an American-led attack. Bringing to the forefront of the world’s consciousness a strategically insignificant but historically significant place like Maa’loula, Syria’s most famous Christian village well known to tourists as the place where the nuns will sing ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ for you in Aramaic, ‘the language of Christ’,  is a very clever ploy. The regime has learnt well from the American and British PR firms it paid so handsomely to advise it on ‘image enhancement’ before the revolution broke out. Better trained and better funded, they are winning the PR war.

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Posted in Syria and tagged , , , , , ,
05 Sep 2013
2 Comments

Bonanza for Syria’s Treasure Thieves

The colonnaded street at Roman Apamea, Syria's largest archaeological site, visited by Mark Antony and Cleopatra [DD]

The colonnaded street at Roman Apamea, Syria’s largest archaeological site, visited by Mark Antony and Cleopatra, now the victim of numerous illicit digs [DD]

This month was to have seen the start of a major three month exhibition called simply ‘Syria’ running from Sept-Dec 2013 at the Royal Academy in London’s Piccadilly, showcasing its art treasures to the world. Preparations were well under way when the Syrian uprising began in March 2011.

Instead, over the last three months criminal looting, illicit digs and theft of Syria’s art treasures have reached colossal proportions. Armed gangs, taking advantage of the absence of security at archaeological sites, have carried out systematic violent excavations, sometimes using bulldozers, to steal priceless antiquities.

Sites damaged by the fighting can often be repaired. Stolen items are lost forever. This criminality is a by-product of the fighting, and it is escalating.

The areas particularly affected are near the borders where the antiquities can be quickly and easily transported out of the country.  In the east near the Iraqi border ancient sites like Mari and Doura Europos have been targeted, in the west sites like Apamea and the Forgotten/Dead Cities, and in the south near Dara’a hundreds of hired men and armed gangs have been digging illegally inside the Al-Omari Mosque and in the Wadi Yarmouk and Tell Al-Ash’ari archaeological sites. Palmyra has also suffered illegal looting.

In an attempt to counter this alarming escalation, Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums has been trying to keep track so it can alert Interpol to intercept the antiquities being smuggled and has launched a new website in English and Arabic http://www.dgam.gov.sy which is updated daily cataloging the damage. Their experts have been trying, against the odds, to stem the outward tide of treasures and have been turning up at work every morning to do their best in the face of this criminality.

War damage to Syria’s cultural heritage has already been considerable. But damage from pure criminal theft is ten times worse and needs to be stopped. The full-scale looting of an entire country’s heritage is at stake and only the restoration of law and order can put a stop to it.

Some will say it is wrong to talk of physical damage to buildings at a time when such catastrophic loss of life is taking place. Of course the loss of human life matters more than anything, but this matters too, because when the war is finally over, Syria will need its rich cultural heritage to bring much needed employment to help rebuild the country. Its loss damages every Syrian.

The famous 5th century St Simeon Stylites' Basilica in the heart of a lawless area south of Aleppo [DD]

The 5th century St Simeon Stylites’ Basilica, one of the ‘Forgotten/Dead Cities’ in the heart of a contested area south of Aleppo [DD]

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Posted in Syria and tagged , , , , ,
01 Sep 2013

Syria is not Iraq – 10 key differences

Images of Paradise in the mosaics of Damascus' Great Umayyad Mosque [DD]

Images of Paradise in the mosaics of Damascus’ Great Umayyad Mosque [DD]

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus [DD]

Following on from ‘Syria’s Ghost’ (posted 31/08/2013) here are 10 key differences between the case for intervention in Syria as opposed to Iraq:

1. In 2003 Iraq was not in a civil war. It was simply another repressive authoritarian Arab state not much worse than Mubarak’s Egypt and Gaddafi’s Libya.

2. Syria in March 2011 witnessed a peaceful spontaneous uprising against its repressive authoritarian leader Bashar Al-Assad.

3. The Iraqi people were not asking the US-led coalition to intervene.

4. A large section of the Syrian people asked the international community to intervene after the Assad regime countered their peaceful demonstrations with extreme violence, arbitrary arrest and torture.

5. Iraq in 2003 did not present a threat to the international community. There were no Al-Qa’ida operatives or jihadis inside Iraq. They came in later to profit from the chaos we created.

6. Syria presents a serious threat to the security of the international community. The Al-Qa’ida-linked jihadi groups have thrived in the vacuum left by our non-intervention, and are growing. They are starting to dominate the moderate rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army.

7. Iraq was not a proxy war.

8. Syria has become a proxy war: America v Russia, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Hizbullah v Salafis. The interests of the Syrian people have been lost in the proxy war interests.

9. Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. It was not in danger of collapse in 2003. It was not at war and was stable.

10. Syria would be a humanitarian intervention under the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine (Bosnia is the model). Syrians are dying of starvation and lack of medical attention as well as regime massacres and chemical weapons attacks. An entire generation is being lost.

For all those reasons, Syria is not Iraq, and for all those reasons, from the moment the regime made clear its intention to wipe out all opposition, I have supported intervention by the international community. Without it, Syria will disintegrate entirely over a period of years, and the fallout will come back to bite us big time.

Saladin's Castle in the mountains above Lattakia [DD]

Crusader Castle of Saone, later Saladin’s Castle in the mountains above Lattakia [DD]

Saladin's Tomb in Old Damascus. Saladin was a Kurd. [DD]

Saladin’s Tomb in Old Damascus. Saladin was a Kurd. [DD]

Looking at it objectively now 10 years on, the American-led invasion did inadvertently help one sector of the Iraqi people – the Kurds. Autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan could almost be seen as a model for the Middle East. Its schools since 2012 are teaching all world religions equally, and Islam is just one of them, no favouritism. It is booming economically thanks to its oil and its trade with Turkey. But all that was an unintended consequence.

Syria’s Kurds could also benefit from the current crisis in Syria, but that is happening anyway, and will continue irrespective of American strikes. More and more of them are pouring out of Syria’s northeast corner into Iraqi Kurdistan, where they are being warmly welcomed. Kurdistan may well turn out to a lasting beneficiary of the chaos inside Syria, along with the Syriac Christian community in eastern Turkey:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23614968.

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Posted in Kurdistan, Syria and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
31 Aug 2013
3 Comments

Syria’s Ghost

Damascus' Great Umayyad Mosque with its Jesus Minaret

Damascus’ Great Umayyad Mosque with its Jesus Minaret

Nothing symbolises the cultural diversity and complexity of Syria more than Damascus’ Great Umayyad Mosque. Built on Aramean then Roman foundations, it was a cathedral, then a mosque, even serving as both simultaneously for nearly a century. But the colourful mosaic of Syria is becoming a broken jigsaw. Why is that?

In a word, Iraq. The spectre of Iraq hangs over the way everyone has viewed the Syria crisis for the last two and a half years. Syria is seen through Iraq-tinted spectacles. From the start the media has wanted to see everything in terms of what went wrong in Iraq, and never more so than now.

But Syria is not Iraq. It is so different from Iraq it is hard to know where to begin in listing the differences.

The spectre of Iraq and the US/UK-led destruction of Iraq has held back any meaningful involvement in helping the Syrian opposition. In time the vacuum started to be filled by extremist groups, all too keen to get meaningfully involved. In the first year of the Syrian uprising there were no extremist groups involved at all, in the second year they grew to 5% of the opposition forces, and in the third year they have grown to 15% and rising. Abandoned by the west, Syrian rebels had little choice but to accept the help of extremist Islamist groups in fighting the omnipresent Assad regime, in power for over 40 years and very deeply dug in. What else could they do?

The spectre of Iraq has held back western public opinion from supporting Syria in its quest for a fair new Syria, a Syria where arbitrary arrest and torture, routine under Assad’s Ba’athist system, is finally abolished and political prisoners are set free.

And now the spectre of Iraq has prevented British MPs voting to support military action. Britain has abdicated and sidelined itself, tied itself in tortuous knots made up of Iraqi string.

No one, it seems, can see past the spectre of Iraq, and the media must take its share of the blame in this. The media loves a good crisis, a good war. Suddenly Syria is all over the airwaves, when it was barely getting a mention before the chemical attack. It had become too boring, too routine, averaging about 200 deaths a day, not really worth mentioning, unless of course there was a nice cannibal to report on.

If America takes military action now, it will be doing so for all the wrong reasons and the consequences are by definition unknowable. Syrians are pawns, their fate is being decided by outside players who are now finally, when it is too late, becoming involved for their own reasons, with their own agendas, not for any genuine humanitarian reasons. The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ rule could have been invoked long ago if western powers had wanted. But the spectre of Iraq held them back.

According to Islamic popular tradition, Christ will descend from the Jesus Minaret of Damascus’ Great Umayyad Mosque before the Last Judgement to fight the Antichrist. Never has Syria needed a saviour more than now.

Syria is not Iraq. But it is cruelly haunted by the ghost of Iraq.

Maybe in the future we will all be haunted by the ghost of Syria, for our failure to help its deserving people.

Unintended irony in the caption beside Bashar: 'God is Syria's Protector'

Unintended irony in the caption beside Bashar: ‘God is Syria’s Protector’

Posted in Syria and tagged , , , , ,
14 Aug 2013

One year since Father Paolo’s abduction by ISIS

Father Paolo 2 download

Father Paolo in front of his beloved Mar Mousa Monastery

On 29 July 2013 Father Paolo was abducted by ISIS in the Syrian city of Raqqa. There have been occasional rumours of his death at the hands of ISIS, most recently by an ISIS defector who said Paolo was shot 14 times and his body thrown into a well, but the Vatican so far has refused to confirm or deny such rumours. Until any news is definite, I will therefore keep this piece in the present tense, reissued in remembrance of a remarkable man.

Father Paolo does not fit the mould. He is not a man of conventions and has always pushed at the boundaries of what both Muslims and Christians consider acceptable. An Italian Jesuit priest, he went against the rules of his Jesuit community and set up an ecumenical monastery in the mountainous desert between Homs and Damascus.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Steps leading up to the Monastery of Mar Mousa, steps which Father Paolo himself helped to build.

It represents his entire life and there is no doubt he would be prepared to die for it, for Syria and for his beliefs.

What are his beliefs? For him it does not matter whether you are Muslim or Christian, as long as you are close to God. He rejects the strict concept of ‘orders’ as very occidental: “Orders come from the West,” he always said. “In the east there are no orders.” He also felt it does not matter if you are a man or a woman, as long as your commitment to God is deep and sincere. He has always rejected what he sees as narrow-minded criticism of his allowing both monks and nuns at his community of Mar Musa. Most unusual of all though, is his conviction that he has been called to bring Islam and Christianity closer to each other. This is the whole purpose of his monastery, where masses were attended by Muslims and Christians alike. “We are here for the Muslims and for Islam”, he said. “We must not be against them. We are here for them.”

This is what he said to everyone who visited, and before the revolution up to 50,000 visitors a year came, mostly Muslims. He said it to Marius Kociejowski, who devoted a chapter to Father Paolo in The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool, and he said it to me when I last visited him in November 2011, eight months into the Syrian Revolution when almost no foreigners came any more to Mar Musa.

On that occasion, six months before he was expelled from Syria for his outspoken criticism of the Assad regime and equally outspoken support of the Syrian Revolution, he spoke animatedly about his fears for the country. He foresaw the partition of the country and all the old divisions he was fighting so hard to dispel, resurfacing in ugly ways. He was disappointed in the position that some of his fellow Christian churchmen and women were taking in the struggle, trying to exclude themselves from the fight.

To imagine that he would stay out of Syria after his expulsion was always unrealistic. A man like Paolo could never be a bystander and watch from the sidelines. He knew the risks he took in going into Raqqa, in trying to speak to militarized extremists. The risks would not have mattered to him. What mattered was that he at least tried to negotiate, tried to reason with them not to fight against Kurdish groups. He believed in sacrificing personal happiness in pursuit of a greater goal.

“For me there is no East or West,” he said. He rejected the mould. May his philosophy never die.

Father Paolo 2 download

Related links:

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20110

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/syria-jesuit-priest-paolo-dall-oglio-killed-498510

Jesuit Priest Father Paolo Dall’Oglio Shot 14 Times by Syrian Freedom Fighters (Video)

 

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