As someone who has spent 35 years living and working in the Arab world and has for the last ten years owned a house in Damascus, I must challenge the assertion made by Timothy Radcliffe in “On the road from Damascus” (19/26 December) that “around 70% of Syrians support Assad”. Fr Radcliffe entered Syria on a government visa and he was of course only shown round regime-held areas – currently less than a third of the territory and [containing] around half of the population – so this figure is hardly surprising, since even those who do not support Assad would be foolish to admit it openly in that part of the country. Muslims and Christians have long coexisted peacefully in Syria, as Fr Radcliffe correctly points out. But, in the words of Melkite Patriarch