In late November, the seemingly dormant civil warfare in Syria reignited and Syrian insurgent teams started a brand new drive throughout western Syria. At first, the rebels captured Aleppo and Hama, after which moved on to the capital Damascus, lastly toppling the Assad regime.
The autumn of the Assad regime—the final secular Arab regime—represents a victory for Islamist, terrorist insurgents and their allies. These terrorists’ allies, most particularly the US and the State of Israel.
Washington started to publicly and actively pursue this in 2013 when then-President Barack Obama declared that Assad “should go” throughout a joint press convention with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then, as now, the US was being repeatedly pulled into regional conflicts within the service of the Israeli state. Tel Aviv needed a puppet regime put in in Syria that might facilitate Israeli land grabs in southern Syria.
This opposition to the Assad regime was packaged as opposition to Assad’s alleged human rights abuses, though Assad’s supposed warfare crimes now look nearly quaint in comparison with the continuing butchering of girls and kids by the Israeli state in Gaza.
Simply as Tel Aviv respects no worldwide regulation or limits on warfare imposed by simply warfare concept, so additionally the Israeli state will not be loath to assist terrorists when they’re useful in toppling Israel’s stronger enemies.
For years, the US has stored hundreds of troops in Syria—with about 9,000 there now—and, as Eric Margolis places it, the US “with Israel, helps the jihadists whereas publicly denouncing them.”
Thus, Washington and Tel Aviv have each lengthy supported what are basically adjuncts of ISIS and Al-qaeda in Syria, together with the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), headed by Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Now, with the Islamists triumphant over Syria’s secular state, Julani yesterday delivered a victory speech on the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, declaring the success of the “mujahideen.”
Julani was previously the chief of al-Nusra Entrance, which was the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. In 2016, Julani rebranded, claiming to chop ties with al-Qaeda, and adjusted his group’s title to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, which merged with different Islamist teams to kind HTS in 2017.
With the tip of Syria’s secular regime comes yet one more devasting blow to the dwindling communities of Christians within the Levant and the Center East total.
For at the least twenty years, Washington has been systematically participating in insurance policies which have destroyed historic Christian communities within the Center East. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 destroyed the secular regime there which had supplied authorized protections of Christians. Within the wake of Bush’s warfare, violence and reprisals in opposition to Christians multiplied. Bush’s warfare there basically created an influence vacuum that allowed for the rise of Islamist gangs all through Iraq, culminating within the rise of ISIS which systematically destroyed Christian holy websites, and Christians themselves, throughout northern Iraq.
Whereas claiming to be in opposition to radical Islam, the Bush administration, and each president since, has chosen to ally with a few of the most brutal Islamist regimes of the Center East—particularly Saudi Arabia—which has all however completely outlawed Christianity for generations. The US has as an alternative set itself in opposition to the regimes of the area that truly tolerate and supply some authorized protections for Christians, specifically Syria (beneath Assad) and Iran.
With Assad gone, it’s doubtless that Christian communities in Syria will undergo as they’ve in Iraq. We’re prone to see Islamist waves of violence in opposition to Christian church buildings and communities, with new mandates for the hijab and different components of Islamist costume imposed all through the nation. On condition that the conquering group is basically al-Qaeda, we would even count on the dynamiting of historic Christian shrines and church buildings.
Syria, in spite of everything, is house to Damascus the place St. Paul the Apostle first turned a Christian and was baptized by St. Ananias of Damascus. Syria was an vital heart of Christian theology in early centuries beneath Church Fathers like Ephrem the Syrian. To today—however maybe for not for much longer—historic teams of Christians pray the Divine Liturgy in Aramaic, the day by day language of Christ.
This may occasionally quickly all however vanish as Christianity is compelled underground by the hands of those allies of Washington and Israel.