Christians and other religious minorities in Syria fear the Middle Eastern nation has traded one oppressor for another since the ouster of longtime strongman Bashar Assad created a power vacuum that warring factions have rushed to fill.
Fighting between Assad loyalists and opponents in Latakia and Tartus spiraled into sectarian bloodshed last week as Sunni militias stormed the region, threatening Christian and Muslim minorities.
“You have the Alawite and the Shia. But we also have the Christians, who are the minorities as well,” Brian Orme, acting president of Global Christian Relief, told The Washington Times. “[The Christians] are not part of the conflict whatsoever, but also they are being affected and persecuted as well — and pushed out.”
The violence left more than 1,300 Syrians dead in under 72 hours. Other bloody skirmishes have since killed dozens more.
“It freaked us out. We couldn’t sleep. It was a very painful few days,” Adi Oweis, a Syrian Christian, told Christianity Today. He said Christians aren’t the primary targets of the fighters, but the factions view them as “infidels, as people who don’t believe in what they believe in.”
Christians are the least-armed population in Syria, Mr. Oweis noted.
Mr. Assad inherited his dictatorship upon the 2000 death of his father, who had ruled Syria since 1971. Overthrown in December, Mr. Assad decamped to Russia, a longtime ally.
In the wake of the Assad ouster, an interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have taken control of most of the country — and neither has seemed to take seriously the task of keeping minorities safe.
Mr. Orme disputes the idea that Christians, who number about 300,000 in Syria, are merely collateral damage amid the fog of war. Figures on how many Christians have been killed in post-Assad skirmishes are unavailable.
“From our reports from Christians on the ground, they have already seen consistent persecution,” he told The Times. ”[There are] reports of killings, reports of churches being ransacked, some Christian cemeteries being overturned, discrimination, and even leaders holding back pay for Christians to starve them, discriminating against them, squeezing them out.”
Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, warns that HTS is more extreme than many realize — and the group’s real identity is more familiar to Americans than they might expect.
“Make no mistake: This is ISIS and Al Qaeda combined with other radical Islamist groups,” he told The Times. “It speaks to butchery, which completely aligns with who these guys are.”
Many Christians have fled Syria, where they had numbered more than 1 million before the start of the country’s civil war in 2011.
“Christians in the Middle East tend to be very connected with other Christians around the world and with relatives, so they tend to be a lot more mobile,” Mr. King said. “Most of them have gone.”
Christians left behind in Syria probably have good reason to stay, according to several experts familiar with the situation.
“These communities of believers and Christians in these coastal towns especially, have been there for thousands of years,” Mr. Orme told The Times. “So they are connected to the very beginnings of the church. And so there’s a historic understanding that this is their home, even though they’ve been reduced to, I think, somewhere around 2% of the population.”
One group of 500 Kurdish Christians from Afrin has been repeatedly displaced by clashes between Turkish militias and the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, swelling to 1,200 as more refugees join their ranks, Christianity Today reported. Now sheltering in Aleppo, they have no safe place to worship.
“The militias … are trying to attack the Christians,” Majeed Kurdi, an Iraqi Kurdish pastor, told Christianity Today. “And especially they are looking for the converted Muslims to Christianity.”
Meanwhile, the Syrian government insists it has control of the situation.
“No one will be above the law, and all those whose hands are stained with Syrian blood will face justice — fairly and without delay,” Mr. al-Sharaa said last week.
Human rights groups are unconvinced.
“There are no restraints for the protection of religious minorities. It’s open season on them,” Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute told Christianity Today.
The U.S. has condemned the violence, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for “a political transition that demonstrates credible, non-sectarian governance as the best path to avoid further conflict.”
“We will continue to watch the decisions made by the interim authorities, noting with concern the recent deadly violence against minorities,” Mr. Rubio said last week.
