In FrontPage today I discuss one disastrous aspect of our support for the Free Syrian Army:
The Times of London reported Thursday that “the West and Gulf states are funding a new military offensive by rebel forces around Damascus in an effort to throw the Assad regime on to the back foot before a second round of Syria peace talks. The assault marks an attempt by the Free Syrian Army and its allies abroad to reassert control after months of rebel infighting.” The chief victim of this funding, however, may not be Bashar Assad, but the nation’s Christians.
The report notes that the Obama government “has established a training base for the FSA, say rebel field commanders. It includes $57 million in cash to pay the rebels.” The U.S. is also supplying weapons: “late last month, the US approved a supply of a big shipment of arms to rebels in Jordan.” This aid is supposed to go to the “moderates” of the Free Syrian Army in order to help them counter Syrian rebel forces that are aligned with al Qaeda.
On the ground in Syria, however, the distinctions between the various anti-Assad groups are often not easy to discern, especially since U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar have “channelled the lion’s share of funding and weapons to hardline religious factions such as the Islamic Front,” and the rebel factions are not fighting each other, but are all fighting against Assad. Another U.S. ally, Turkey, has likewise aided the anti-Assad forces.
All these groups are not just battling Assad; they’re also fighting against the nation’s Christians. This is true not just of the al Qaeda groups, but of the Obama-backed Free Syrian Army as well. In July 2013, Free Syrian Army fighters entered the Christian village of Oum Sharshouh and began burning down houses and terrorizing the population, forcing 250 Christian families to flee the area. Worthy News reported that just two days later, Free Syrian Army rebels “targeted the residents of al-Duwayr/Douar, a Christian village close to the city of Homs and near Syria’s border with Lebanon….Around 350 armed militants forcefully entered the homes of Christian families who were all rounded-up in the main square of the village and then summarily executed.”
In September 2013, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry praised the Free Syrian Army as “a real moderate opposition,” the FSA took to the Internet to post videos of its attack on the ancient Syrian Christian city of Maaloula, one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken.
This is just the faction Obama is backing. The rebel factions funded by our “allies” Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey behave even worse toward the Christians.
Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham, who lives in Damascus, explained in October 2013 that the persecution was the result of the perception that the Syrian Christians supported the Assad regime: “Some people are saying that we Christians are the friends of the regime, but we are not, we are just ordinary Syrians, and we pray for all. Besides, even if we are for the regime, that is our right as free people.”
Back in May 2011, the Patriarch wrote to Western leaders asking them not to intervene in Syria: “Our Arab countries are not ready for revolutions, and not even for democracy of the European kind and model. I am asking the West not to encourage revolutions unconditionally here and there in the Arab world.”
This request went unheeded; yet now the reason why it was so sagacious is abundantly clear. Late in January a delegation of Syrian Christian leaders went to Washington at the invitation of the Westminster Institute and Barnabas Aid in order, according to a statement issued by the Westminster Institute, “to raise awareness of the humanitarian catastrophe that the Syrian conflict has become, and to explore concrete steps that can be taken by the United States to help end the crisis and to protect Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.”
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mortimer says
U.S. Christian leaders need to have a conference about the destruction of the Near Eastern church IMMEDIATELY before they cease to exist due to Islamic genocide!
RonaldB says
I hope this does not imply that atheists shouldn’t be concerned with the Christians of the Middle East. Or with the Muslims either. Although Muslims have a propensity to slaughter other Muslims, it is a source of deep shame to me that the US is abetting and encouraging the slaughter. The proper position of the enlightened West is to neither help nor hinder the interminable intra-Muslim wars, but to provide a refuge for the true apostates.
It is in the interests of atheists to ally themselves with the civilized communities of the Middle East, which emphatically includes Christians. It so happens that an extremely autocratic government provided extremely good protection for the Christian minorities, not to mention the Muslim minorities. Any sane atheist would oppose the US efforts to depose the government of Syria.
The government of Syria did have blood on its hand, and does pose a strategic threat to Israel and to the Sunni countries. We seem to be trading the illusion that a fanatic,monolithic, weak Syria is less of a threat than a secular, but relatively strong government, hostile to Israel and friendly to Iran. For this illusion, the US and the McCain Republicans are cynically sacrificing not only the Christians, but the many thousands of non-combative Muslim civilians caught in the crossfire.
Jay Boo says
Secretary of State John Kerry is growing a beard.
Let’s hope he does not apologize profusely for not being a Muslim.
Does a lizard change color to match its rock?
Jay Boo says
Photo of an offensive diseased pus filled blasphemy
http://www.domeoftherock.net/
Cindy Mccoy says
This president is arming everyone in the world while trying hard to disarm the American public!! He is the worst president we have ever had and is so dangerous. We need to impeach him or arrest him for treason. I believe he had everything to do with deaths of our people in Benghazi. He is too arrogant to pass off things to be handled by someone else. He thinks no one can anything as good as he can!!! So now it is time to pay the fiddler. He needs to be jailed!!!!! And almost everyone in his administration needs to be there too!!!!!
David from Britain says
Obama strikes me as rather like a more dangerous version of Jimmy Carter.
Gamaliel says
Notice however how Obama stands up for Gay rights in Russia. He is meeting with the gay opposition to Vladimir Putin. Maybe he sees Christians as enemies of gays and so doesn’t want to help the Christians in the Middle East. There are a lot of reports that Obama had a gay life before he was president. http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/claim-obama-hid-gay-life-to-become-president/
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/claim-obama-hid-gay-life-to-become-president/