Christian Winter

This is an article I had published on Broowaha on Easter Sunday under a different title.  I want to preserve it here also. 

It’s Easter Sunday, late in the evening. I’m in Paris for the weekend, looking out over the city of lights. It’s been a wonderful few days. I’m not in the habit of writing on vacation, especially when I’m on a romantic interlude in the most romantic city on earth!

I could have held this article over until Monday evening, when I’ll be back in London but, as I say, this is Easter Sunday. There is no better time to draw your attention to the plight of the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, now in serious danger of extinction.

These are the original Christians, people whose forebears were settled in the area several centuries before the Muslims arrived. For them the Arab Spring has not brought liberation but persecution and fear, all caused by the upsurge of militant and murderously intolerant forms of Islam.

Most of you will be aware of Hilary Clinton’s attempt to have a UN resolution passed, condemning the government of Bashar al-Assad for the violent assault of the Syrian army on the rebel-held city of Homs. What you may not be aware of is that Islamists in the city have carried out a ‘religious cleansing’, forcing 50,000 Christians to flee from their homes in terror, a fact reported by Douglas Davis in the latest issue of the Spectator.

It’s not an isolated event. Christians in other Syrian cities have come under attack. Bishop Antonine Audo of Aleppo, where a car bomb was exploded in the Christian quarter last month, says that the people are very afraid – “The Christians don’t know what their future will hold.”

Left-liberals are much given to gnashing of teeth over the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. There are no laments at all over the persecution of Palestinians…by other Palestinians. The threat even extends to Bethlehem, the literal and metaphorical cradle of Christianity.

As Davis mentions in his article (Out of the east), thirty years ago three quarters of the people living in the West Bank town were Christian. A reign of terror by Islamic extremists, involving land theft, intimidation and beatings, has reduced that figure to an estimated ten per cent.

The violence extends to Hamas-controlled Gaza, where half of the Christian

population have left their homes since the terrorist organisation took control of the area in 2007. Hardly surprising when one learns that there have been calls for people to slaughter their Christian neighbours, a chilling fact that seems to have escaped the likes of Alice Walker and all of the other 'useful idiots' who would succor Hamas.

I was in Egypt last November, when I made friends among the local Coptic community, people whose ancestors were in the country in the days of the pharaohs. The email correspondence I receive confirms the reports of growing apprehension in the face of the victory of the Islamist parties in the parliamentary elections. There have been killings and church burnings from Luxor in the south to Alexandria in the north. Last year no fewer than 200,000 people were forced to leave their homes under threat of further violence.

The greatest tragedy of all, though, has to be the fate of the Christians of Iraq, whose exodus from the country in the wake of George Bush’s ill-conceived invasion of 2003 has reached biblical proportions. Before the invasion there were 1.4million. Now only 400,000 are left.

Since 2003 nine hundred and fifty Iraqi Christians have been murdered and over sixty churches bombed. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom warned recently that “the end of Christianity in Iraq” was approaching. Most of those who are left are the elderly, people who exhausted their savings helping their children leave.

Amidst this unprecedented tragedy there is one bright spot for Arab Christians – Israel, a state that guarantees freedom of worship to all faiths. There the community has increased by an estimated 2000 per cent. In highlighting this fact, West goes on to make the following observations;

Never mind the ‘Israeli apartheid’ myths that flourish on Britain’s university Campuses. What intrigues me is why Britain’s political and media classes, normally so sensitive to humanitarian issues, turn away in the face of very real apartheid-style oppression that persists on the Arab world; why they remain silent as Christians are persecuted and the UN Human Rights Council, which last month endorsed the human rights record of Libya’s late Mummar Gaddafi, peddles its bizarre nonsense.

I’m guessing the position here is the same in the States, at least judging by the attitude of Hilary Clinton. I would urge you all, Christian or not, to spare a thought for an ancient community facing annihilation, even if she does not.

Syrian Pawns

I visited Egypt last November, though I had originally planned to go to Syria. There are some wonderful places there, particularly the remains of Palmyra, who’s Queen Zenobia, a figure of endless fascination for me, once took on the power of Rome. There is also Krak de Chevaliers, the most magnificent Crusader castle in the whole of the East.

I didn’t go, for obvious reasons. After my initial planning last spring the political situation began to spiral downwards in successive stages. It was too volatile, I was advised, too dangerous, so best to look elsewhere. I had a marvellous time in Egypt but I still think of Syria, still hope that one day soon I will, like Saint Paul, take the road to Damascus.

I’m certainly keeping an eye on developments in the country, just as I did last year on Libya, when Sarkozy and Cameron went on muddle-headed humanitarian ‘crusade’, one that has had wholly predictable results, results that I predicted at the time. All the right sounds are being made about Syria, how awful Bashar al-Assad is, how dreadful the massacres of the people, and on and on, but so far the two twits have done nothing but tweet. So, too, has Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, fuming at Russia and China for blocking an anti-Assad resolution at the United Nations.

I despair of our politicians, our leaders, forever incapable of looking below the surface. Look below the surface in Syria and what do you see, the huddled, pro-democracy masses yearning to breathe free, perhaps? No, that’s not what I see. Oh, yes, there is plenty of footage from Homs, the scene, supposedly, of the worst outrages by the Syrian army. But the majority of the country, including the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, is peaceful and unaffected. Sorry, that’s not quite true. As Rod Liddle writes in the Spectator, there have been occasional attacks by the operatives of the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ on civilian targets in the capital.

Even the benighted Dame Clinton (I can just picture her in pantomime) admits that, unlike Libya, large parts of Syria are peaceful, that there is no massive anti-Assad movement as there was anti-Gaddafi. What she can’t see, seemingly, is that the opposition, encouraged by the likes of al-Qaeda, Hamas and Saudi Arabia, is dominated not by democrats but by fundamentalists. Not content with allowing the Islamists to take charge in Tripoli she also wants them in Damascus.

“Democracy and human rights” the early demonstrators against Assad chanted. Oh, no, they did not; they were heard to shout “Send the Christians to Beirut and the Alawites to coffins.” Syria has a large Christian minority going right back to the days of Queen Zenobia. It’s now the largest the Middle East, given that the previously flourishing community in Iraq has all but been destroyed by the Bush-Blair ‘crusade.’ The secular Assad regime has long protected the community, just as it has protected the moderate Alawites and other Shia minorities. Now they all face an uncertain future if the rebellion is not contained.

The Free Syrian Army, whose NATO-sponsored ‘government-in-exile’ is dominated by the most reactionary elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, is fighting a proxy war on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. President Assad describes them as ‘foreign terrorists’ with some justification, for a great many are, coming from Iraq and Libya. The weapons are supplied by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, countries that could not give a damn about the suffering of the Syrian people. No, in the bigger game of politics they just want to replace the region’s last secular ruler, all the more contemptible to them because he is an ally of Iran. In this game the ordinary people of Syria are no better than pawns.

Don’t mistake my position here; I am no friend of Assad, as unscrupulous and as bloody a dictator as they come. But a backward Wahhibi theocracy would be so much worse; worse for the majority, worse for the minorities, worse for women, worse for those who desire even a modicum of personal freedom.

It’s the hypocrisy that angers me most. Western leaders pontificate about the abuse of ‘human rights’ in Syria while conveniently ignoring those same abuses in Saudi Arabia. Britain and France intervened in Libya in support of ‘freedom’, only to see ‘freedom’ crushed in Bahrain without comment. With no appetite in the West for fresh interventions, the Saudis and Qataris are urging us to arm the rebels, a more cowardly course of action I find difficult to contemplate, one that will only prolong the suffering of the pawns of Syria into an indefinite future.