The Syrian Christians Must Be Rescued. But, from What?

(This an English translation of an article I wrote first in Arabic to be published in Damascus Journal, London, and a shorter version of it in French translation was already published in the French Le Monde last week)

            From the very first moments of the Syrian revolution, voices from East and West were raised lamenting the Christians’ situation in the heart of the struggle, and calling for rescuing them from the war’s inferno and for protecting them from the ethnic and religious cleansing, which they are going to be exposed to when the tyrannical and criminal regime would collapse and be replaced by an Islamist, fanatic rule. Since the very first harbingers of the Syrian people’s rebellion, the Christians found themselves in the midst of riots that were pulled later on, by the regime and the extremist rebellions alike, into the square of an open, bloody war. And because Syria became an open field for settling the historical, strategic and political deals of the entire region, the Christians fell at the mercy of the choices of their clerical prelates, on one side, and the terrifying, treasoning discourse and media of the regime, on another.

            Most of the Christian (and Muslim) religious prelates have often been attached to the regime in Syria by means of a complicated network of authoritative, pragmatic, individual and mutual-interest network of connections and alliances; a network that has started during the age of Al-Assaad senior and continued during the rule of Al-Assaad junior. Therefore, and since the revolution’s kick off, these prelates resiliently proliferated before the entire world the claim that the Easter Christian public hardly sees any possible salvation and survival to itself in the East after the collapse of Al-Assad’s rule. As if the recent Assaad is the Church’s contemporary Messiah, and as if the Assaadi regime and no else is the guarantor of Eastern and Arab Christianity’s salvation; as if Christianity has never existed before it and it will never continue existing after or without it. The discourses of these clerical prelates have always been baptized with negative imaginations on the rebelling Muslim (and Christian) Syrians, which insinuate that they are the enemies of Christianity and a threat to its existence; as if the Christians have never lived side-by-side with Muslims during the 1400 years, minus forty years, and as if what happened to the Christians in Iraq is definitely the fate that is waiting for them in Syria.

On the other hand, the regime and its local and international media machine worked, from the beginning of the revolution, and at the peak of this revolution’s peacefulness and civility, on terrifying the Christians (and the Alawites) from the consequences of the revolution’s success and the replacement with a new Syria the ‘Syria’ which the regime malformed and tailored according to its own calculations. The regime worked hard on enhancing the presence of religious and confessional extremism and started to pave the paths for filling Syria with all kinds of terrorism, fanaticism and jihadism. As well as it started to exert on the silent Christians in Syria all sorts of terrorization, threatening and suppression possible; promising them of excessive harm and evil if they just thought of supporting the mere principals of the revolution or if they, merely theoretically or ethically, backed its rightful demands (as the regime itself admitted at one point). The regime has recently intensified its exploitative implementation of the Christian clerical prelates in its media and propaganda policies; opening before them all the internal and external venues to express their fear from Islam and to reveal explicitly their historical, cultural and sociological loftiness toward every non-Christian.

Yes, the Christians of Syria needs rescue. But, they need to be rescued from the two above mentioned sides, who force on them exclusivist ideologies and political and public discourses that promulgate hatred and demonization against the ‘other’ and narrows the Christians’ (and Alawites’) view of this other down to mere sociopathic complexes. The Syrian Christians need to be rescued by all of us from the regime’s exploitation of them as merely cards, no more, in the game of its own survival and existence. They must be rescued from a hegemonic regime that does not at all protect the minorities (nor the Christians among them in particular), but it rather protects itself by the minorities and use them as a shield for its own rescue. The Syrian Christians must be rescued from the false discourse of the regime’s agents among their own clerical prelates, who propagate lies on the nature of the events in Syria and its true details. They must be rescued from the disastrous choice of these church leaders, who opted for stretching their hand of alliance to the owner of power and authority and rule, instead of deciding to open their arms toward the broader Syrian society and to embrace the people’s choices and defend the oppressed, tyrannized, terrorized and killed among those, who are supposed to be the Christians’ brothers and sisters in the nation. The Christians must be rescued from this option, for rules and regimes rise and fall, and only people and their co-existence remains.

            Yes, the Syrian Christians need to be rescued from the regime’s terrorizing and tyrannizing game by making the world realize, contrary to what the regime and its agents around the world allege, that the Christians in Syria opt for whatever their siblings in the nation long for, and they dream of another Syria with no tyranny; and they do not wish that Syria would remain as it was or as it is now; and they are not innately persuaded by the theory of ethnic and religious cleansing. They do know that the revolution was not unleashed against them, but against the regime that intimidates them, by the revolution, from its collapse. The Christians must be rescued from systematized fear and intellectual suppression. We must take seriously on board that many of them participated and still in the revolution, despite their spiritual leaders’ wishes and against all the security forces’ threats.

    

            Dear westerners, Christian or non-Christian, be sure always that you hear about the true Syria, not hearing what you intrinsically or subconsciously wish to hear that the situation is. If you want truly to rescue Syrian Christianity, then please differentiate it from the lies and alliances of its clerical prelates and their submission to their Assadi messiah. If you want to rescue the Syrian Christians, know that they do not believe in the regime’s propaganda and claims about its protection of minorities. They do remain silent before these claims, not because they concede them, but because they are afraid of the oppression and punishment they will be exposed to by the regime if they withstand them. Rescue the Syrian Christians from over-projecting your Islamophobia and problems with Islam on their situation. Rescue the Syrian Christians by viewing them as the Christians in Egypt, not as the Christians in Iraq. Just like their brothers and sisters in Egypt, the Christians in Syria do support the general demands of the public and they dream with the Muslims and the secularists alike of a Syria free from terrorism, killing, blood, blaspheming, jihadism, fanaticism, backwardness, tyranny, hegemony and corruption. Rescue the Christians from the lies and loyalties of the corrupted and weak among their leaders. And, rescue them from tyranny, terrorization and intimidation, which the regime strangles them with.                               

So That the Syrians Would Pick Up the Lesser of Two Evils: What Does Jabhat al-Nussrah Do in Syria?

Everyone in the Arabic and Western media speaks about what is known as ‘jabhat alnussrah’ (the Support Front) and its phalanges, and they extensively describe the highy fighting abilities of its members, the ferociousness in battles, their first-class organized jihadi activities and their battalions’ consistence of islamist jihadi from every corner of the broad Islamic world, in its Arabic Eastern and non-Arabic Western parts alike. One also views various Syrians expressing their stark fear from the discourse of this Islamist Front and its Islamist dogmatic approach, which calls for establishing an Islamist caliphate in Syria, while other Syrians narrate sagas on their oppressive and violent conducts against the rebelling Syrian public before any other and against the revolution’s non-Islamist youths. Some even narrates how these jihadies stood withstood at some occasions the peaceful public demonstrations, which recited civil, non-religious slogans and carried the flag of the revolution instead of the Front’s one. To the contrary, one can also find other groups of Syrians, who belong to certain Syrian opposing currents in specific, either staunchly defending Jabhat al-Nussrah, or suffice with justifying its conduct and pointing at some bright aspects in its presence in Syria, noting about the Front’s respect of the non-Muslim Syrian citizens and their serious concern about these latter’s safety inside the liberated Syrian territories, or even informing us about his meeting with the fighters of the Front and their warm and intimate welcome and hospitality toward him, as well as their insistence in front of the informer to resent noticing any difference between Christians and Muslims in Syria, etc etc.

 This is what one witnesses via the textual and audio-visual media means East and West. Jabhat al-Nussrah has occupied the international opinion’s center of attention and to busy the Syrian, Arab and worldly public-squares hundred times more than the Syrian revolution per se or the suffering and misery of the Syrian people, who offers hundreds of martyrs on daily basis on the altar of freedom and the dream of deliverance from both the regime and the Front alike.

 Yet, what I would like to reflect upon in these pages is an inquiry, which I hardly find anyone on the Arab scene, who spent sufficient time and offered the necessary analytical efforts to study and attend to: why there is in the first place such a jihadi movement called ‘Jabhat al-Nussrah’ in Syria? What are the political and strategic reasons that led the Qataris and Turks to create such a Jihadi Front in Syria, the thing that makes the entire world today concentrates all the attention to this Front and channels stances of international fear and rejection towards it, without, actually, doing anything tangible to end the existence of this group on the Syrian land, and without pressurizing any side that is influential on the Syrian revolution to abhor this Front and work towards purifying the Syrian revolution from the negative and lethal traces of this jihadi phenomenon on the Revolution itself and nothing else.

 Those who follow up the news of the Syrian revolution via the internet and the social networks can realize that the Syrians have unceasingly proposed analyses and explanations for the existence of Jabhat al-Nurrah in Syria and whose side benefits from this presence. Some people suggest that the Front was imported into Syria by the regime itself. It was part of the regime’s attempt at marring the image of the revolution before the West and making this latter fear from the consequences of such a revolution that is led by Jihadis. I do believe that the regime has played a role in allowing the members of this jihadi Front to sneak into Syria, especially at the beginning of their visible appearance in the country. I also surmise that it is not unlikely that the regime released from the prisons of its security forces, during the first months of the revolution, some terrorist key-figures. Yet, I believe that the regime did this for the sake of either re-exporting them to the neighborly countries, which stood with the Syrian people and supported its freedom from the regime. Or, the regime released there terrorists and availed them as easy targets and catches for the Western secret agencies, in an attempt at cutting a last-minute deal with the West; such a deal, which the regime eagerly searched for since the very beginning of the rebellion in Syria. Having this conceded, It is far from likely, I believe, that the regime has created by itself such a ferociously, staunchly and effectively influential fighting phalanges on the ground for the mere reason of defaming the image of the revolution and intimidating the West. Doing such thing would be a suicidal action, a professionally and cunningly tyrant and terrorist regime like the Syrian one is not so stupid to commit. During the past year, Jabhat al-Nussrah has succeeded in costing the regime’s forces so highly and radically and at almost all the corners of the Syrian land, Damascus included. They cost the regime indelibly harmful loses, and it corners right now the regime’s forces in a very narrow corner in the battle ground. It is far from tenable that the regime is this suicidal and reckless to create such a powerful monster and make it turn around to face it and nearly defeat it.

 Some other Syrians do like to believe that the insurgence of Jabhat al-Nussrah is an expression of a natural reactionary response to the horrible crimes which the Syrian Nironian, criminal regime committed against the Syrian public and the armless citizens, especially the Sunnite segment of the population. This means that Jabhat al-Nussrah is the child of the spirit of solidarity and a priori human compassion with others, which characterizes the Arab Human nature and pertains to the notions of ‘supporting the Ummah’ and salvaging the bereaved and oppressed that are inherent to the Islamic religious rationale. One, actually, cannot cast aside the fact that this humanitarian solidarity aspect is one of the main causes behind the transformation of the revolution from mere public, peaceful demonstrations into armed resistance and self-defense that was launched by thousands of defected army soldiers and officers, who effused to shoot the citizens and sympathized with their freedom and decided to turn to the side of the public and protect the demonstrators in their peaceful, unarmed attempt at gaining their freedom. This is also the sheer anthropological and existential factor behind some of the civilians’ decision to carry weapons and obligatorily use arms to protect himself, his family, neighbors, relatives and clan’s members. However, this factor alone is insufficient, in my conviction, to explain the origination of fighting jihadi phalanges like the ones of Jabhat al-Nussrah in Syria, or behind making it and no other the beating-heart of the public’s armed resistance of, and its war-machine against, the regime. This existential and humanitarian factor is not enough to explain or justify the fact that these jihadi fighters conduct all their battles with the regime, no matter how lethal and destructive they were, in the midst of the civil, inhabited neighborhoods of the Syrian cities. These neighborhoods are only occupied with innocent, armless and helpless civilians, who are supposed to be protected and secured by the jihadi fighters, and not to become the first victims of these fighters’ battles. Has Jabhat al-Nussrah entered Syria to salvage and support the Muslim oppressed and brutalized in Syria, it would have not chosen to fight the regime in the heart of the cities that are inhabited with these Muslims, and it would have not permitted these inhabitants and no other pay the unbearable price of their brutal war with the regime from their own possessions, lives and souls.

 Be that as it may, why does Jabhat al-Nussrah exist in Syria; and why is it today a central and inherent part of the scene of the national and humanitarian tragedy in the country? The answer in my opinion lies in specific strategic, political and authoritarian calculations that are not related to the present situation or to the revolution in itself, but are primarily relevant to the future of politics, state and authority in post-Assad Syria. What I would like to propose here is that the creation of Jabhat al-Nssrah in Syria aims ultimately at pulling the Syrian people and making it obligatorily and choicelessly comply with the game of ‘chosing the lesser of two evils’. If the jihadi Front, jabhat al-Nussrah, along with what its Islamist fanatic thought from and logic represent, is the first evil option, the second evil option, I affirmatively note, is not here the recent Syrian regime or the possibility of its survival. The second lesser evil option in this equation is going to be, in my conviction, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and no other.

Since the very first months of the revolution, I wrote various articles and published them in the culture appendix, Nawafiz, of the Lebanese newspaper, al-Mustaqbal. I also published in last October an English book on the Arabic Spring and the Syrian revolution called And Freedom Became a Public-Square. In both writs, I stated bluntly my conviction that the decision-making chambers in the Western world have started already to express in various forms its willingness to support the Arab Muslim Brotherhood’s occupation of the power-seat in the new Arab World, as well as their readiness to avail to the Brotherhood’s Islamist project the chance to prove itself the needed alternative in the Arab World that can successfully and satisfactorily replace the falling dictatorships. I repeated this thesis in various public-lecturing occasions and also through many publications. And I do believe that the events in the Arab World, primarily in Egypt, prove that the West and America first and foremost back up the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule and would like to see yet succeed in holding the scepter of power in the Arab World for the coming decade at least. The observer cannot but realize this wish and perceives its syndromes through the unchanged support of America to the Islamists’ president Muhammad Morsy (with sending some exceptional warning messages via the media every now and then that aims at sedating the human rights’ and democracy and civil-society supporters in the international public-square) and their standing by his rule until this very moment, despite all the catastrophic and irreparable mistakes which he, his regime and party commit against democracy, human rights and civil-society in Egypt.

 It is my belief that the same wish of supporting a Muslim Brotherhood alternative in Egypt also drives the wheel of the American and Western thought with regard to Syria as well. By doing this, the West thinks, as I showed in my other writings, that it will turn the Islamists into allies, instead of foes, and would succeed in placing an effective and influential Sunnite front in the Arabic street over-against the Iranian ambition in the region (until it manages to cut a deal with Iran. America seems to have started to contemplate the items of this deal with the regime in Iran, and it tries now to send reassuring and peaceful messages that tells Iran that the Muslim Brotherhoods are a Sunnite alternative that can become a friend of Iran and not its enemy, and it is better as an alternative than any salfi-wahabi option that would certainly antagonize Iran. This message-conveying may actually be the purpose of the latest political flirting between Egypt’s Morsy and Iran’s Najad, which is occurring under an American green-light). The West also thinks that opting for this alternative would satisfy the influential Sunnite powers in the region, especially Turkey, and make them a useful, instead of a harmful, player in the Middle East.

 On the basis of the very same logic, America and Europe has supported, and still, the idea of the arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria to the seat of power and their replacement of the falling Assadi regime, in a replication of the scenario of Egypt. This is why, actually, the West never backed up in any tangible or evidently reliable manner, and from the very first moment of the Syrian revolution, any of the Syrian liberal, secularist and non-Islamist opposing parties or bodies. To the contrary, it deliberately ignored them and made the Western media and public-squares almost marginalize them and hardly mention them or pay their discourse any attention, wagering that these mentioned oppositions do not have a realistic presence in the Syrian square and that they lack any noticeable civil and public influence and popularity comparing the Muslim Brotherhood. In support of the latter, some Turkish Lebanese and Gulfi sides tried to convince the American decision-makers that the Muslim Brotherhood is the sweeping public and revolutionary power on the Syrian land and that they are going definitely to gain the authority once al-Assad’s regime collapsed, and that the Islamist alternative is a regional request from all the countries of the Sunnite crescent.

 The above notwithstanding, the ensuing months of the Syrian revolution proved to the West and to the supports of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood that the rebelling Syrian street is not actually a purely Muslim Brotherhood public. They even discovered that, in fact, the dominant majority of the rebellions inside Syria recite insistently slogans, call for principles and values and express futural stately visions that are not only similar to the slogans and principles and discourses which were raised by the admirable rebellious youths in Egypt and Tunisia against the Islamists and the Brotherhoods in their countries. The Syrian rebelling youths also recite innumerable ideas and views and values, which the Intrinsic and extrinsic Syrian liberal, secular and civil dissenters have frequently verbalized before the western decision-makers, whenever these latter were ready to (very rarely) meet up with them and listen to their view on the revolution and the future of Syria. This factor revealed to the Western decision-makers that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s arrival to the seat of power in Syrian may not be as easy a task as they imagined, and these Islamists may not actually enjoy an indelible and sweeping public and civil support, as some made them think. One could even witness some very few occasions, when the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood themselves, confessed publically that they are not the only, prevalent power on the Syrian scene and they cannot rule Syria alone. This confession intensified very shortly before Jabhat al-Nussrah appears on the Syrian land. Actually, this jihadi Front fell on the Syrian soil right after the Brotherhood’s confession and the West’s realization of the realistic situation of the Syrian public’s orinetations. Then, and only then, this front spead around Syria, started to develop visible power and influence and usurped mercilessly the revolution from the civil demonstrators.

 In the light of the substantial, radical development in the Syrian scene, the Western and Arab decision-makers found themselves confronted with a new challenge: who are they going to pave the way, or furnish for, a smooth and easy arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood to the circle of rule and power in Syria, and how can they block completely the path before any other Syrian opposing option, which does not, as they believe, serve the purposes of the newly constructed strategic equation for the entire region? I propose here that the decision they opted for was finding a way to necessarily force the Syrian people into a state of complying to, or satisfactorily opting, for the choice of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, considering it ‘the least evil option’. How is this going to be achieved? By means of creating an opposite, counter-parting Islamist entity that is supposed to be much more radical, extremist and salafist than the Muslim Brotherhood. This new entity is going to be inserted into the Syrian scene, and it would be driven into playing a major and axial role in the transformation of the nature of the struggle in Syria, before this, afterwards, drives the revolution into identifying itself with the fanaticism and extremism of this option. This identification is going to be achieved by means of exerting all sorts of terrorism, intimidation, aggressiveness, and practice of all the things that would force the public to abhor this Islamist entity and part ways with it. The idea is to nudge the Syrian revolting public before any other into rejecting and abominating this new radical fanaticism and to express its rejection of allowing such an Islamist option to rule Syria in the future, publicly and explicitly.

Which option is better, then, than jihadi, salafi, armed phalanges called ‘Jabhat al-Nussrah’, enters Syria and depicts to Islamism a terrifying, abominable, violent and starkly negative image before the Syrian public; an Islamist body that does not suffice with military, jihadi operations against the regime ( the goal, which it is supposed to have had entered the country to achieve), but starts even declaring a complete political agenda for Syria in the future (as if it says that it came into the country to remain for good) that lies in establishing an Islamist caliphate and imposing shari’a Law and the rule of ‘forbidding evil and ordering good’ (al-amr bel-ma’ruf wal-nahi ‘an al-munkar); these principles which no Syrian can accept or vote for any political nominee on its basis (as all the Syrian oppositions know, including the Muslims brotherhood); and which the Syrian people have never rioted to achieve and never called for (not even the staunchest religious groups among them), neither during the first moments of the revolution, nor during its ensuing phases. The latest events in Syria, moreover, shows us that the troops of the mentioned Front have started to apply on the ground specific life-forms and practices and conducts before the Syrian public, in the area they recently occupy, that excessively freaks the public out and drive them to hate the idea of Islamist caliphate and its ramifications: what is demanded in fact from Jabhat alnussrah is nothing but push the public away from it. Which fanatic, violent, aberrating, salfi and backwardly option can be worse than the one which Jabhat al-Nussrah excels in presenting, and what other option that it can serve better the strategy of ‘choosing the lesser of two evils’ strategy? In fact, there nothing more effective than creating a Front like Jabhat al-Nussrah to stand on the opposite extreme over-against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt at presenting themselves to the public opinion in the image of the moderate, tolerant and the one who calls for a civil, plural state in Syria. There is nothing more effective and fruitful than such an Islamist contrast between to sides, that are essentially similar in dogma, yet distinguished in methods and styles, to make the Syrian public in the future says to itself: if the only options before me in the futural Syria are ‘either jabhat al-Nssrah, or the Muslim Brotherhood’, then the fire of the latter is easier and much better than the inferno of the former.

 In the light of the fatal errors and the total failure, which the Muslim Brotherhoods’ governments in the Arabic Spring countries suffer from and fall consistently into, the West can no more market and easily propagate the Brotherhood as a reliable, successful alternative in the Arabic Public-squares, and it is no more able of doing this in Syria in specific, because the Syrian people are watching vigilantly and carefully what is occurring in Egypt and Tunisia and they say to themselves: if this is what the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be like, we certainly are not going to accept it and will never stand behind it in any revolution. In their attempt at supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as an alternative of the falling regimes and marketing them as well in Syria, the West, Turkey and Qatar have no other choice but allow Jabhat al-Nussrah to exist and to continue influencing the Syrian scene and playing an axial role in the present Syrian situation, upon the hope that the comparison, which the Syrians would pursue between this Front and the other Islamist choice that is supported by the West and the powers of the region (Muslim Brotherhood) would eventually take the Syrian people toward succumbing to the option of the Brotherhood and no other as the only available solution.

 The real danger of Jabhat al-Nussrah does not only lie in its war arsenal and military force in the present time. Its real danger lies in the role that it is expected to play in the future’s political activities and developments. In the forthcoming Syrian future, and after the approaching salvation from the violent and criminal regime of al-Assad, we will witness the transformation of this jihadi Front with a strong back-up from its first patron, Qatar, who will ask the Front to surrender its weapons and arms (or hide it from the public scene) and then it will start rehabilitating this Front’s fighters and turn them from warriors into politicians and public-stately activists under the rubric of ‘the Salafist Islamist front/party in Syria’. This new party is going to be imposed on the Syrian scene as a major and influential player, whose political role would be to continue applying the strategy of ‘the lesser of two evils’, as it will continue playing a role that is similar in nature to the role of the Salafi groups in Tunisia and Egypt: standing always before the internal public opinion as a fanatic, extremely exclusivist and staunchly Islmist political alternative that is ready always to devour power, in a stark contrast to the Muslim Brotherhood, who are going to be given by the Arab world and the Western public opinion the image of the moderate, pluralist and civil Islam. The Syrian people would find themselves under the mercy of this sarcastic, insulting theatrical tragedy, which aims at pushing it always to resort against it wish to the option of the Muslim Brotherhood, upon the dream that this option is going to protect it from falling under the mercy of the new political alternative that is far more fanatic, salafi and backwardly. As the game of the ‘salafism-brotherhood’ struggle in Egypt and Tunisia succeed so far in saving the Brotherhood and injecting some more life in their failed regimes, there are some sides who believe that the same game would also work out and prosper in Syria: why not, these sides say, since the Syrians have started from now to transpire their rejection and abhorrence toward the Islamist alternative that is presented by Jabhat al-Nussrah and they must later on also refuse the fanatic, salafi political and sectarian alternative as well, let alone find themselves obliged to avail to the Muslim Brotherhood the chance, which the West before any other side wants them to have.

 The remaining question here, still, is related to the stance of the Syrian liberal and secular oppositions on such a scenario and interpretation of the creation of Jabhat al-Nussrah in the Syrian scene. Does this branch of opposition construct its imaginations of the Syrian future upon a serious consideration of the existence of such a scenario? I do wish that these Syrian liberal, secular and civil oppositions, inside and outside the country, would consider working on salvaging the Syrian people and Syrian the country alike from all the catastrophic side-effects and fatal consequences of the game of ‘choosing the lesser of the two evils’. I do wish them to appeal for unifying their front and moving beyond their disagreements, personal, privative interests and temporary ideological and pragmatic discrepancies and start to establish a Syrian, inclusivist and comprehensive ‘rescue Front’ that contains within it all the civil, liberal, secular and democratic powers and side in the Syrian scene, and to start doing this from now, so that it can confront and prevent the fall of Syria in the trap of ‘either the Muslim Brotherhood and its project’ or ‘the salafi-jihadi, like Jabhat al-Nussrah and their agenda’. Is their any listener to the voice of an insignificant Syrian citizen, who enjoys no position, or power or decision-making status?