Save Syria’s Christians

David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, had rather tellingly different responses to the latest wave of violence in Syria. Lammy deplored the ‘horrific violence’ but failed to address where that violence was coming from. Rubio, by contrast, stated clearly that ‘radical Islamist terrorists’ were targeting minorities in Syria, including Alawites, Christians and Druze.

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Rubio is right. While precise numbers are difficult to ascertain, it appears that, according to a source verified by the Hungarian government’s State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians – the only one in the world – up to 3,000 people may have been killed, the majority of them innocent Alawite civilians. A number of Christians have also been killed. While clearly a pogrom against the Alawites, Christians in Syria are deeply concerned because, as the old Syrian phrase has it, ‘first the Alawites, then the Christians’. Since the accession of the Islamist government at the end of last year, Christians have been the subject of murder, kidnappings, intimidation and vandalism. The situation is very tense.

It may not be acceptable to say so, but, under the undeniably brutal dictatorship of the Assad family there was no inter-religious strife and all religious minorities were protected. On a visit to Iraq in 2017, my interpreter, a resident of Raqqa and a former supporter of the rebels, told me he was committed to Assad because he had seen the alternative.

The alternative, even if they put on western suits and enjoy obsequious chats with the Davos crowd, are all committed Islamists. The new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, otherwise known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, started his terrorist career in Iraq with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before moving the franchise to his own version of al Qaeda.