In the nighttime on Monday, Elias, a 21-year-old Syrian Christian residing in Berlin, acquired a voice message from his mom in Damascus. She was weeping. “If something occurs to us, don’t come again to Syria,” she stated. “Do not come to bury us. Do not come for this shitty piece of land, for this shitty home. Stay the place you might be.”
A Syrian insurgent coalition led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani had taken over the capital metropolis on Sunday. And whereas Syrians are collectively celebrating the autumn of Bashar al-Assad’s sadistic regime, Syrian Christians are nervous about their future within the area. The Islamist rebels in Syria have a historical past of persecuting Syrian Christians.
Elias, who requested that we use a pseudonym to guard his household, informed The Free Press that he has seen some actually horrific acts by the rebels. In 2014, when he was nonetheless a toddler, he went to a household pal’s home to console them after their son was kidnapped by Islamist rebels from a Christian space. While they have been there, their son’s severed head was delivered in a field—his cross necklace stuffed in his mouth. They buried his head in his household’s plot in a Christian graveyard. In 2022, at a church inauguration ceremony that a few of Elias’s family attended, a insurgent drone landed in the midst of the ceremony, killing two individuals and injuring 12.
“I’m solely 21 years outdated,” Elias stated. “But I’ve already buried 12 buddies.” Not surprisingly, he fears the worst. “We don’t have any purpose to belief al-Jolani,” he stated. “He is a terrorist.”
Al-Jolani is a former al-Qaeda member who was affiliated with one of many Mideast’s most savage terrorist teams, ISIS. In 2011, initially of the Syrian Civil War, he shaped an al-Qaeda offshoot referred to as the Nusra Front to battle Assad’s troopers.
Al-Jolani’s Nusra Front lower ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and merged with different anti-Assad insurgent teams within the space to type Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which interprets to “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.” This is the group, led by al-Jolani, that quickly took management over Syria in simply 12 days, after 13 years of combating Assad’s military.
Two months in the past, Mary, who additionally requested to make use of a pseudonym out of concern for her household’s security, visited shut family residing within the space in western Syria referred to as Valley of the Christians. When she was there, the Assad regime nonetheless managed the territory, and principally left the Christians alone. In an e-mail to The Free Press, she wrote that the Islamist forces had since taken over her household’s small village as they have been making their option to Damascus. It occurred so shortly that Christians within the space “didn’t understand what was occurring.”
For years, the perspective of the Syrian Christians was that in the event that they left Assad alone, he’d go away them alone. And for essentially the most half, that’s what occurred. But the unconventional theology of many Islamist rebels in Syria resulted in acts of violence in opposition to Syrian Christians, all the pieces from desecrating church buildings to kidnapping and homicide.
So, when armed Islamist fighters standing within the streets of Mary’s village inform the Christians no hurt will come to them, they don’t have any purpose to imagine them.
For years, the Christians in Mary’s village held sizable Christmas celebrations. But this 12 months, she stated, “When the native Christmas tree was lit, only a handful of individuals confirmed up. Some outlets are open, however many individuals don’t go away their homes and are ready for what’s going to occur subsequent. Others, although, simply wish to go about their every day lives.”
The Free Press spoke to a Lebanese Christian who runs a ministry for younger Syrian Muslim and Christian refugees in Beirut, a lot of whom have grown up in Lebanon as a result of struggle. (He additionally requested anonymity.)
“The majority of younger Muslims we work with are hoping to return to Syria. They’re saying, ‘Now we will go go to our house nation with none issues.’ Before, they have been afraid to do this, as a result of they have been afraid they’d be compelled to hitch Assad’s military, or they’d go to jail and be tortured, particularly if they’d members of the family who have been a part of a insurgent group. So they really feel pleasure and they’re celebrating.”
But the Syrian Christian refugees, he added, are much less hopeful. “They surprise if Syria will flip right into a strict Islamic nation below al-Jolani.”
To Western media, al-Jolani portrays himself as somebody who has gone by a “rebrand.” He lately sat down with CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh, who coated her hair with a hijab for the interview. Behind al-Jolani, the black-on-white flag bearing the Islamic Shahada, which has additionally been flown by the Taliban and different jihadist teams, stood subsequent to the purple, black, and inexperienced flag of the Syrian opposition. During the interview, Al-Jolani informed Karadsheh that his solely purpose was to overthrow Assad’s regime. He additionally stated that minority non secular teams will dwell peacefully below his Islamic authorities. “No one has the correct to erase one other group. These sects have coexisted on this area for lots of of years, and nobody has the correct to get rid of them,” al-Jolani stated, after acknowledging that some non secular minorities have been violated by rebels prior to now. He stated that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has “addressed these points.”
Al-Jolani shrugged off Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s designation as a terrorist group, calling it “primarily political” and “inaccurate.” Meanwhile, the U.S. authorities nonetheless has a $10 million bounty on al-Jolani’s head for info on his whereabouts.
A 2023 report from the State Department detailed that in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s space of affect in northern Syria’s Idlib province, the group would regularly “unlawfully detain activists, journalists, and personal residents who have been vital, together with on social media, of their rule or non secular doctrine.”
Although al-Jolani is saying all the correct issues to the Western media, Mary worries about what’s going to occur when the world isn’t watching anymore.
“I’ll proceed to hope,” she wrote in her e-mail.
Christians have lived in Syria for over 2,000 years, however their numbers have dwindled because the starting of the civil struggle in 2011, declining from 2.2 million to about 500,000 or much less, making up simply over 2 p.c of the inhabitants. Richard Ghazal, a Syriac Orthodox Christian and govt director of In Defense of Christians, a part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C., stated that below Assad’s rule, Christians in Syria have been usually protected by Assad so long as they didn’t elevate objections to his merciless dictatorship. But they have been at all times handled as second-class residents. Many of them fled to Lebanon throughout the struggle. He stated that Syrian Christian church leaders spoke favorably about Assad as a result of they needed to—it helped maintain the Christian group secure.
“Bishops and monks in Syria and even within the United States knew that each one their phrases and actions have been scrutinized by the Assad authorities,” Ghazal informed The Free Press. “If you weren’t a cheerleader for Assad, you have been the opposition.”
This week, Fr. Bahjat Karakach, a Franciscan friar in Aleppo, informed Vatican News that Christians residing below Assad weren’t residing, however have been merely surviving.
Ghazal met with the State Department and politicians on Capitol Hill earlier this week and urged them to make it clear to Al-Jolani that America is watching. “The United States wants to indicate that we have an interest. They want to indicate that we’re not going to be fooled, and we’re going to make use of no matter means potential from a foreign-policy standpoint to ensure that is proper.”
Ghazal stated he has acquired studies from Syria of rebels destroying liquor shops, since alcohol is banned in Islam, and of rebels telling ladies to cowl their hair.
“This is chapter one,” stated Ghazal. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham continues to be attempting to woo the world.”
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, informed The Free Press that Christians in Syria are susceptible as a result of “they don’t have any protector, no militia, and other people benefit from them, both for prison causes or for ideological causes, in order that they’re very a lot in peril. Whether it’s an Islamist authoritarian rule or whether or not it’s simply political chaos, they’re fearful.”
And but, in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest metropolis and the primary to fall to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, there’s a unusual normalcy. “Things are constructive for the Christian group,” stated Hadeel Oueis, a Syrian Christian residing within the U.S. who grew up in Aleppo. “The Islamist insurgent teams wish to present the worldwide group that they’ve modified. They need the West to take them off the record of terrorist organizations. So they’re behaving.” Oueis was arrested in 2011 and imprisoned for posting info on Facebook about anti-Assad protests in Aleppo. Despite the insurgent takeover, she stated, the members of her household have been in a position to return to work.
The Center for Peace Communications, the place Oueis works, carried out on-the-street interviews with Christians in Aleppo after Al-Jolani’s takeover, and most have been cautiously optimistic. “The first two or three days have been uncomfortable, and we have been very afraid,” stated one girl. “We’ve had sufficient of struggle. It’s been 13 years, and our kids haven’t been in a position to expertise life. But after a few days, the electrical energy received higher, and our state of affairs has turn out to be higher, safer.”
It’s too early to inform if al-Jolani will maintain his phrase and make sure the security of minority non secular teams below his rule. Previous examples of Islamists taking management of a rustic aren’t encouraging. In 2020, after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban, a Sunni Islamist terrorist group very similar to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, promised to permit women and girls to attend faculty and universities. Nearly 4 years later, ladies are banned from attending faculty past sixth grade, and ladies are now not allowed to talk in public.
On Wednesday in Damascus, the electrical energy was out. Even although Elias’s household house has photo voltaic panels, they didn’t activate the lights. People with entry to photo voltaic power are assumed to be rich, and his mother and father didn’t wish to appeal to the eye of potential looters and robbers. For now, there may be nothing to do however wait at the hours of darkness.
