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Syrian Christian Leaders Call On US To End Support For Anti-Assad Re

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  • Syrian Christian Leaders Call On US To End Support For Anti-Assad Re

    TIME Magazine
    Jan 30 2014


    Syrian Christian Leaders Call On U.S. To End Support For Anti-Assad Rebels

    By Elizabeth Dias


    The stories told by five top Syrian Christian leaders about the
    horrors their churches are experiencing at the hands of Islamist
    extremists are biblical in their brutality.

    Bishop Elias Toumeh, representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of
    Antioch and All the East, tells of the funeral he led ten days ago for
    the headless body of one of his parishioners in Marmarita. Rev. Adeeb
    Awad, vice moderator of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and
    Lebanon, explains how the rebels blew up his church and then pointed
    the finger at the regime. Bishop Armash Nalbandian, primate of the
    Armenian Church of Damascus, says he received word on Facebook from a
    fellow bishop in Aleppo that two congregants were traveling when
    opposition fighters stopped their bus, made them present their
    Armenian IDs, and then took them away. The fighters, Nalbandian
    recounts, returned to the fellow passengers a few hours later with a
    box, which they said were cakes. Inside were the two Armenian heads.

    The bishops' stories are difficult to independently verify, and the
    war's death toll goes far beyond just Christian communities in
    Syria-more than 130,000 people have been killed since the fighting
    began, and at least two million others have fled the country. But they
    are emerging as part of a concerted push by Syrian Christians to get
    the U.S. to stop its support for rebel groups fighting Syrian
    president Bashar al Assad. "The US must change its politics and must
    choose the way of diplomacy and dialogue, not supporting rebels and
    calling them freedom fighters," says Nalbandian.

    The group is the first delegation of its kind to visit Washington
    since the crisis began three years ago, and its five members represent
    key different Christian communities in the country. Awad, Toumeh, and
    Nalbandian were joined by Rev. Riad Jarjour, Presbyterian pastor from
    Homs, and Bishop Dionysius Jean Kawak, Metropolitan of the Syrian
    Orthodox Church. The Westminster Institute and Barnabas Aid, two
    groups that focus on religious freedom and relief for threatened faith
    communities, sponsored their trip.

    Given the United States' increased support for non-terrorist rebel
    groups in the wake of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons, the
    religious leaders' mission is a long shot. The bishops are asking the
    United States to exert pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
    and Turkey to stop supporting and sending terrorist fighters to Syria.
    "The real problem is that the strong military opposition on the ground
    is a foreign opposition," Awad explains, arguing that US support of
    opposition groups means support for foreign terrorist fighters. "They
    are the ones killing and attacking churches and clergy and nuns and
    burning houses and eating human livers and hearts and cutting heads,"
    Awad says.

    The Syrian Christian churches are not publicly calling for outright
    support of the Assad regime. Doing so would further endanger their
    followers and hurt the moral component of their case, given the
    regime's alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. Instead,
    they're meeting privately with law makers, diplomats and think tanks.
    Sunday evening, they spoke with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) at St. John the
    Beloved Catholic church in nearby McLean. On Monday, they held court
    at the Heritage Foundation and Catholic University of America. On
    Tuesday, they met with Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Rep. Robert Aderholt
    (R-AL) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and then met with leaders of the
    U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Wednesday's lineup
    included Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Joe
    Manchin (D-WV), State Department officials including Lawrence
    Silverman, Near East Affairs deputy acting aecretary, and Uzra Zeya,
    acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
    and Labor, and then a final stop at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

    It's been a difficult issue to gain traction on, if for no other
    reasons than that support for Christians and endangered minorities can
    appear as support for Assad and that an entire country is being
    destroyed by war, not just Christian communities. President Obama only
    briefly mentioned Syria in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
    "In Syria, we'll support the opposition that rejects the agenda of
    terrorist networks," he said. "American diplomacy, backed by the
    threat of force, is why Syria's chemical weapons are being eliminated,
    and we will continue to work with the international community to usher
    in the future the Syrian people deserve--a future free of dictatorship,
    terror and fear."

    Traction in Congress has also been a challenge, but a handful of
    leaders are speaking out. The U.S. House of Representatives passed
    legislation in September, authored by Wolf and Eshoo, to create a
    special religious minorities envoy at the State Department who would
    work for policy options to protect faith communities, but the bill has
    yet to move forward in the Senate. "Meeting with the delegation of
    Syrian Christian church leaders this week provided a constructive
    opportunity to raise awareness and to discuss concrete steps that can
    be taken to help protect Christians and other religious minorities in
    Syria," says Eshoo. "Christians in the U.S. should be informed by
    their leaders about the atrocities taking place in Syria. The history
    of violence against religious minorities must not be allowed to repeat
    itself."

    Wolf has championed the cause during his congressional tenure, but he
    is retiring at the end of this term. Newer leaders like Aderholt see
    it as a time to take a stand. "Most Americans do not realize that
    Christians across the Middle East are in grave danger and have often
    been forced to leave their home countries due to persecution and
    threats from radicalized Muslims," he says. "If we want a true
    democracy to emerge from this region, Christians and other religious
    minority voices must share in the decision-making process, and
    certainly not be persecuted and fear for their lives due to extremist
    elements that are pouring in to Syria."

    The bishops' stories are similar to other grim instances of violence
    against Christians during the war. Christian schools in Damascus were
    shelled in November. The next month, a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns were
    taken from Mar Takla Monastery in Maaloula. Rebel groups abducted two
    bishops near Aleppo last April. Jesuit priest Paolo Dall'Oglio, whom
    TIME wrote about in 2012 when he visited the United States on a
    similar lobbying trip, has been missing and feared dead since July.

    http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/30/syrian-christian-leaders-call-on-us-to-end-support-for-anti-assad-rebels/


    From: Baghdasarian
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