In recent months, Mideast Christians have been forming militias to fight the Islamic State (IS) and other jihadi groups in both Iraq and Syria—even as the Obama administration, which arms the “opposition,” refuses to arm them.
In Iraq, some of the few remaining Assyrian Christians have formed militias under the name Dwekh Nawsha (literally meaning “self-sacrifice” in Christ’s native tongue of Aramaic). Most of these fighters are from among those Christians displaced from the Ninevah Plain due to the atrocities committed by IS and are on the frontlines fighting the jihadis.
They were formed soon after the U.S.-supported Kurdish Peshmerga, which is leading the fight against IS in the region, retreated from many Christian villages without a struggle last summer, declining to protect them from the IS advance which led to the usual atrocities.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Christians have taken up arms because they want to protect their own land, and many no longer trust the Kurds to do it for them.” Indeed, the Kurds, including the Peshmerga, have been known to abuse and even persecute Christians. Like IS, Kurds are Sunni Muslims too.
“We will stay here, and Christians will protect Christians. Not Arabs or Kurds protecting us, but Christians,” said local commander Fouad Masaoud Gorgees.
In neighboring Syria, approximately 500 Syriac Christian fighters recently assembled and managed to prevent the Islamic State from entering the ancient Christian settlement of Sadad. But on October 30, IS captured a town less than five miles away, leaving Sadad vulnerable to continued assaults.
Even the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, Ignatius Aphrem II, traveled to Sadad to boost the morale of Christian defenders. Said Aphrem:
It was emotional but it was also very encouraging to see our young people determined to defend their land and stay in their homeland. To see them ready to fight and to sacrifice for their land, I think that’s what’s very meaningful, that made me very proud of them.
There’s a reason why Christians are frantically trying to save Sadad from the clutches of IS. As one Syriac Christian fighter put it, Sadad “is a symbolic place for us and we will not allow it to fall again.”
He is referring to the events of October 2013, when the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army—widely touted as moderate but in fact working with al-Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front—captured the town. They made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they killed, the “dogs of Assad”—“dog” being an ancient Islamic epithet for Christians—while shouting Islam’s victory-cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying “thank God”) and praise for the Free Syrian Army.
During their one week occupation of Sadad, the moderate/radical coalition tortured, raped, and murdered 45 Christians; the bodies of six people from one family alone, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for “subhuman” Christians).
At the time, Syriac Archbishop Selwanos Boutros called it Syria’s “largest massacre of Christians.” Even so, this massacre was wholly ignored by the Obama administration and so-called mainstream media in an effort to maintain the narrative that the Free Syrian Army was “moderate.”
Concerning the Sadad massacres, the archbishop had asked in 2013:
We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers?
As persecuted Mideast Christians have well learned since, most Western governments—the Obama administration at their head—could care less about their fate… Keep reading
Ernie says
Maybe the Russians can arrange something to defend these Christians . I’ll pray for it .
Ernie says
Or the French !
Christianblood says
Don’t expect America, France or the UK or any Western country to give any help to these Christians. Western world is not only destroying traditional Christian morality in the West and replacing it moral relativism but America and the Western world is also arming muslim jihadists who are murdering Christians worldwide and with tens of thousands of Christians being murdered each year there is no outrage in the West but only more and more support for muslim killers. Let us hope and pray that God responds to this evil and brings justice on behalf of these Christian victims. Amen!
Ernie says
This time I agree with you Christianblood .
ich says
How can Obama spin this…………………..oh ya………………these people are haters.
Haters gonna hate !!!
dragaozao says
Does anyone wants to know the present world status? Easy: the president of the USA talks (the only thing he does) and NO ONE cares, NO ONE listens anymore. France is joining Russia. USA counts for nothing. Dangerous world…
Angemon says
No, I don’t think they could.
Christianblood says
That is right. People in the West are really more interested in watching things like Bruce Jener ‘transgendering’ into a woman etc, than what is happening to Christians in the M.E.
Ernie says
People in the West is a generalization Christianblood. Yes , there are many empty-headed people in the West , but as you can read here on Jihadwatch for example , we are not all superficial or empty-headed . Our Western leaders in general don’t listen to their peoples . Our DEMOCRACY is becoming less and less democratic . The Evil Monster that’s called the European Union is an un-democratic institution with it’s own agenda . We are betrayed by our “leaders” . We have been dragged into all kinds of military adventurism . And now the enormous mess resulting from this adventurism must be dealt with .
Christianblood says
i agree!
I should put some qualifier before that statement.
? says
Yes because the last thing that the east needs is “radical Christianity” caused by global warming and Allah forbid that those rotten Jews and women follow suit.
William says
Brothers in The East… You’re not going to get help from Western enlightenment, freemasonic, relativistic, secular governments… They hate us almost as much as The Mohammadens…