by Amgad Beblawi
In March 2011, I visited partner churches in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Homs and Damascus. The then-called “Arab Spring” had started in Tunisia three months earlier. This wave of grassroots protests subsequently swept through most countries in the Middle East – except Syria. People across the region were calling for an end to corruption and demanded greater freedoms. Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain – practically every country in the region experienced spontaneous protests – except Syria.
By that point, the question wasn’t whether Syria would join the Arab Spring, but when. All eyes were on Syria with anticipation. Islamist militants across the border in Iraq and elsewhere in the global network of jihadists also kept their eyes on Syri and waited for the opportune time. Protests started in Syria later that month.
ISIL’s origins in Iraq
Islamist militants had been fighting against U.S. forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. By 2004, militants in Iraq (both Iraqi and foreign jihadists) had organized, pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden, and became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
U.S. forces captured hundreds of AQI militants and imprisoned them at facilities such as Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca alongside former Iraqi army officers. The two former enemies received similar treatment by their captors, and in some cases were tortured side-by-side. After their release from the American-run prisons, many of the former Iraqi army officers readily joined AQI and its insurgency against the U.S. forces. Most of the top leaders and strategists of AQI were former officers in the Iraqi army.
In 2006, AQI merged with other insurgent factions to establish the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). In 2010, former Camp Bucca prisoner Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi became the group’s new leader.
Syria’s crisis, ISIL’s opportunity
When the Arab Spring protests started in Syria in March 2011, ISI quickly sent its fighters across the border. For a few months, ISI was one of as many as 2,000 militant groups operating in Syria. The brutal tactics of these groups left no room for moderate or liberal Syrians. Many of the moderate forces that had opposed the Assad government defected to Islamist factions. Early reports from churches across Syria described most of the rebel groups as militant and Islamist in nature, and reported that they included large numbers of foreign jihadists. On the other hand, the majority of secular and liberal Syrians who had participated in the initial peaceful protests quickly abandoned their demands for reforms and, fearing the militant jihadists, preferred supporting the beleaguered President Al-Assad.
In this situation, it is not surprising that the majority of Syrian Christians preferred the Assad regime. In retrospect, it is fair to say that most of the official news reports and analysis failed to fully understand the complex dynamics of the events in Syria.
By 2013, ISI had emerged as one of the leading militant groups operating in Syria. It succeeded in integrating several smaller groups, crushed some of its rivals and recruited thousands of foreign fighters. In April 2013, ISI leader Al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In January 2014, ISIL expelled its rival Al-Nusra Front from the Syrian city of Raqqah and claimed it as its capital, and thus became the most powerful Islamist faction in Syria.
Between February and June of 2014, ISIL swept through large swaths of northeast Syria and much of Iraq. Displaying high levels of organization, skill and brutal tactics, the jihadist group displaced hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis in its path, and buried its victims in mass graves.
In June 2014, after forcing the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga troops to retreat, ISIL captured the Iraqi city of Mosul. On June 29, ISIL announced the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. Al-Baghdadi was named its caliph, and ISIL was renamed the Islamic State.
Christian responses
For churches in Syria and Iraq, ISIL and the other jihadist groups pose an existential threat, expelling whole communities of Christians from their historic homelands. At the same time, new life was breathed into many churches in the region as they responded to crises in their countries by extending hospitality and providing relief to their neighbors. Hundreds of local churches across Iraq and Syria provided shelter for victims of ISIL and implemented relief programs that have proven to be much more efficient and compassionate than secular international relief organizations. Denominational offices of Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic churches became coordinating centers to support the relief work of local churches. Churches worldwide provided financial resources to support the work of Middle Eastern churches. Perhaps this is the first mandate for the global church in disasters like this one – to show compassion, care for the wounded, provide hospitality to the refugee and give a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name.
What has been a more remarkable witness is the response of many Middle Eastern Christians to the violence they experienced directly from Islamist militants. Following the mass beheading of 20 Coptic Christians in February 2015 in Libya, Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church urged his parishioners to “pray for those who have carried out these horrific crimes, that the value of God’s creation and human life may become more evident to them.” The mother of one of these men, a simple peasant, said to news reporters, “I can’t wish [those who killed my son] evil. I pray for them that God may open their hearts and give them his light.” This, too, is Christ’s commandment to love one’s enemy.
Many Christians have carried the cross and followed Jesus during this crisis. The majority of those are Syrians and Iraqis who died serving other victims of ISIL or who refused to deny their faith. One such individual is a Dutch Jesuit priest who had been a missionary in Syria for nearly five decades. When the city of Homs came under the control of militant Islamists, Fr. Frans van der Lugt refused to leave. “If the Syrian people are suffering now, I want to share their pain and their difficulties,” he told newsgroup Agence France-Presse in February 2014, just two months before he was shot and killed by a gunman. Though some 1,400 people were evacuated from Homs, Fr. Van der Lugt insisted he would not leave the city while any of his parishioners remained.
What makes for peace, and what doesn’t?
It’s not enough that the church responds to the needs of victims of terrorism. It is exceedingly important that the church examines and exposes all erroneous ideologies that have led to this global crisis and/or continue to fuel the conflict. The church must ask why an estimated 30,000 foreign young adults (including individuals from Christian backgrounds) from 80 different countries have joined ISIL’s campaign in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Why do they find ISIL’s abhorrent agenda so appealing? What socioeconomic, political and other factors cause them to be disillusioned with their own societies, discontent with their lot in life and vulnerable to being radicalized? Do they have any legitimate grievances?
Rami Khouri, a senior policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, points to the lack of socio-economic and political rights throughout the Middle East. Certainly, decades of authoritarian rule and corruption in most Middle Eastern countries have led to secular protests of the Arab Spring as well as violent reactions and terrorism. Khouri argues that military action does not address the real reasons why so many Middle Eastern youth and young adults do desperate things like joining ISIS or risking death to escape to Europe. On the contrary, it was military action, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that helped pave the way for ISIL, as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reluctantly admitted.
Another factor is the decades-long U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of Palestine. Robert Mally, senior advisor to president Obama for the Counter-ISIL Campaign, asserts that “resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is necessary to defeating Islamist extremists,” and that “ISIS would lose a recruiting tool if the matter were resolved.”
Searching further back into history, the legacy of colonialism may be forgotten in the West, but is still very much alive in the minds of many people in the global south. The legacy of colonialism is kept alive by perceptions of economic exploitation and political and cultural dominance by the West. That perception is cause for bitter frustration for many and is a convenient recruiting tool for terrorists.
Global power struggle and foreign interests are yet another factor in ISIL’s success. When fighting started in Syria, the United Nations sent two special representatives, Kofi Annan and then Lakhdar Brahimi, to try to broker a cease-fire in Syria. A power struggle between the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other side rendered both camps unwilling to compromise. Russia did not want to lose its last military base and long-term ally in the Middle East. The United States wanted to get rid of a regime it considered hostile. Likewise, opposite interests and hostility between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (majority Sunni nations), and Iran and Hezbollah (majority Shia), led to the former providing support to the rebels (mostly jihadist groups) while Iran and Hezbollah supported the Assad regime. All sides poured weapons and ammunitions into Syria. Thus the fighting in Syria has been described as a proxy war.
As the power struggle became more and more intransigent, Annan and Brahimi gave up the attempt to broker a cease-fire, and the chaos in Syria made for a fertile field where ISIL could establish itself and became a monstrous threat to all. Ironically, all of these foreign powers are now entangled in the war in Syria and the global battle with terrorism. In a recent op-ed, former president Jimmy Carter argued that “the needed concessions are not from the combatants in Syria, but from the proud nations that claim to want peace but refuse to cooperate with one another.”
PC(USA) involvement and witness
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been involved in mission work in the Middle East since 1823, and continues to maintain partnership relations with churches in the region. Presbyterian mission personnel continue to serve in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel-Palestine and Egypt.
Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, Presbyterian World Mission has coordinated several visits for Presbyterians to the region to learn firsthand about the conflict and come alongside sisters and brothers in the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon and the Assembly of Presbyterian Churches in Iraq. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance provides financial support for the relief programs of partner churches in the region.
At the 221st General Assembly (2014), commissioners had the opportunity to listen to representatives from the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon give their perspectives on what would make for peace. As a result, the assembly called upon the government of the United States to “refrain from any military interference in the region” and “cease participating in the ‘proxy war’ by supporting the armed opposition.” The assembly noted that “foreign interference, including that of our government, has been counterproductive, if not directly contributing to increase of the violence and destruction of Syria.” The Office of Public Witness, the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations and the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy provide resources for Presbyterians to engage in effective advocacy on the issue.
Presbyterian World Mission-related networks for Syria-Lebanon and Iraq bring together Presbyterians from around the U.S. to facilitate partnerships with churches in the region.
In recent years, U.S.-led coalitions killed thousands of jihadist fighters and many of their leaders, including Osama Bin Laden himself. Yet, today ISIL is bigger and more powerful than all its predecessors and thousands of people from different religious and national backgrounds continue to answer its call for jihad. Middle Eastern churches have seen the results of Western military action in their region and have closely observed the ways that has resulted in an escalation of violence, with untold suffering of millions along the way. They have pleaded with Western churches to advocate against such policies.
In the midst of this global crisis, The Confession of 1967 (written at the height of a global crisis – the nuclear arms race and Cold War) reminds the church of its calling to “commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace.” As nations pursue not what makes for peace but their national interests, the church is called to advocate for just relations among the nations. The church is called to speak, not only against the evil of terrorism, but also against the root causes that render so many people disillusioned and vulnerable to being radicalized.
AMGAD BEBLAWI is coordinator of the PC(USA) mission work in the Middle East and Europe. He serves as a resource for PC(USA) global partners, mission participants and mission personnel engaged in God’s mission in these regions. A native of Egypt, he grew up and was active in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Egypt. He immigrated to the United States in 1985 and now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Susan, and son, Justin.
