The fighting in Syria has dominated the news this summer.
Without a doubt, the greatest lie being told about the Syrian conflict is that it is being waged by President Assad against ‘the Syrian people’. This is pure propaganda. In December 2011, just three months into the crisis, the Qatar Foundation conducted a major poll inside Syria to assess the level of support for Assad. (This was before al-Qaeda and other international Salafi jihadists started flooding in, making the crisis worse.) As an advocate of regime change, Qatar was embarrassed by the results and so buried them. When eventually leaked, the results revealed that 55% of Syrians supported President Assad and 68% of Syrians disapproved of Arab League sanctions. So the main division in Syria is not between Assad and the rest, but between Sunni Islamists and the majority of Syrians.
Protest hijacked
So why are Western governments presenting a totally different story?
Because Western governments are supporting the Islamists.
What started out as a non-sectarian protest movement was quickly hijacked by sectarian Sunnis. Demanding regime change and Sunni rule, they rejected all talk of reform and refused to negotiate.
The chaos in Syria presented all those interested in countering ascendant Iran with a golden opportunity to take a massive bite out of the strategic ‘Shi’ite Crescent’ . Thus, the Syria conflict evolved into a regional proxy war. The US, NATO and Turkey have allied with Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia and Qatar to pursue regime change in Syria, believing it to be the best way to isolate and wound their grand nemesis: Iran.
The West has long known that the Syrian opposition was being infiltrated by international jihadists. Back in April 2011, the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, Gregory III Laham, reported that while the protests did not start out as sectarian — rooted as they were in social and economic grievance — criminals had become involved and weapons were flooding in. He also warned that fundamentalist Muslims were calling for jihad, Christian villages were being attacked and churches receiving threatening letters. In May 2011, Archbishop Cyril Aphrem Karim reported that at protests in Damascus he spotted banners bearing threatening Islamist slogans such as: ‘Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave’. ‘Our feeling’, he said, lamenting Western indifference, ‘is that if the regime falls, the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood will seize power and that is bad news for us.’
Magnet for jihadists
Today Syria has become a magnet for international jihadists and terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, the al-Nusrah Front, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, the al-Baraa Ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade, the Omar Farouq Brigade and dozens more. Syrian Sunni jihadists who have been fighting with al-Qaeda against coalition forces in Iraq are returning home in droves. In Iraq the West calls them ‘terrorists’, but in Syria it calls them ‘rebels’ and ‘opposition forces’. The foreign jihadists hail from all over: including the Caucasus, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Algeria and Gulf Arab states, as well as Europe, including Sweden, France and Britain.
The Free Syrian Army and its Western allies actually believe they can advance on the back of al-Qaeda and terrorist forces and then give them the flick when they no longer need them. But who will stop al-Qaeda establishing bases in ungoverned regions? Who will stop international Islamists from establishing little ‘emirates’ in towns they control, where shari’a will be enforced and from where Christians will be forced to flee?
Killing Christians
The battle for Aleppo is critical. With a population of 2.5 million, Aleppo is Syria’s second largest city after Damascus, and its commercial hub. It is home to swaths of loyalist Sunni Arab and Kurdish business elite, as well as some 250,000 Christians — Armenian, Syriac, Greek Orthodox and Maronite. Jihadists will doubtless attempt to infiltrate Christian districts, not only to kill Christians but to draw the regime’s return fire into those districts. Great for propaganda.
Kapil Komireddi, an Indian journalist and Middle East expert, recently commented in the New York Times: ‘The seeming indifference of the international community to the worsening condition of Syria’s religious minorities [includes 2.3 million Christians] — and the near total absence of censure of the opposition forces by the Western governments arrayed against Assad — is breeding a bitter anti-Americanism among many secular Syrians who see the United States aligning itself with Saudi Arabia, the fount of Wahhabism, against the Arab world’s most resolutely secular state’.
It was in Antioch, Syria, that the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11.26). But as one journalist recently noted: ‘A history that predates Islam won’t guarantee the communities’ survival’.
Elizabeth Kendal has 14 years’ experience as a full-time international religious liberty analyst and advocate. See her blogs:
Religious Liberty Monitoring — http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.com.au/
Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin — http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com.au/
Her book, Turning Back the Battle: Isaiah speaks, is due out later this year.
