ROME – Amid the jubilation unleashed inside Syria and around the world by the fall of the Assad regime Saturday night, one community in the country that probably isn’t in such a festive mood right now would be Syria’s Christian minority.
Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Christians represented roughly 10 percent of the population, which translated to around 1.5 million people. Today that number stands at around 300,000, many of whom left due to constant fighting and economic stagnation, i.e., the same reasons millions of other Syrians have fled. Others, however, have abandoned Syria because of persecution and violence at the hands of radical jihadist groups that make up a significant part of the rebel coalition.
Over the years, the widely held perception has been that Christians were relatively pro-Assad, not because they had any special affection for the regime and its obvious brutality, but rather because it at least kept the Islamic radicals at bay.
Here’s how Jean-Clement Jeanbart, who resigned as the Greek Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo in Syria in 2021, put things in a 2015 interview with Crux.
“Personally, I would say that Bashar al-Assad is a good man,” he said. “I don’t want to pass judgment beyond that, but I’ve met him a couple of times and all my colleagues, my fellow bishops and the priests and nuns, appreciate him.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s an angel,” he said.
Jeanbart told the story of once getting reports about members of his flock who were being encircled by ISIS fighters. He called Assad’s office in Damascus, and a convoy of armored personnel carriers were dispatched to rescue his people. In that context, he said, he found it difficult to call Assad a “monster.”
“It seems sometimes that all the countries of the world are against Assad, but we feel we don’t have any other alternative,” Jeanbart said. “Honest to God, this is the situation. I think [Assad] wants to reform. Let him prove his good intentions, and let’s give him the chance to see what he will do.”
In effect, many Syrian Christians have long felt that the realistic alternative to Assad wasn’t a thriving, pluralistic democracy, but an Islamic theocracy.
To be clear, rebel forces have been saying all the right things during the present offensive, which has reached a crescendo with the capture of Damascus. The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group once linked with al-Qaeda and ISIS but which now insists it’s independent, recently hailed Syria’s history as a “a meeting point for civilizations and cultures,” promising to respect its “cultural and religious diversity.”
During a recent Mass in Aleppo just days after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters captured the city, Armenian Catholic Archbishop Boutros Marayati told his followers that he’s received “assurances” that “everything will remain as before, only better.”
Still, not all has been sweetness and light for Syrian Christians as the rebel coalition has swept across the country.
In Defense of Christians (IDC), a U.S.-based advocacy organization for Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, has said it’s received reports that Christians have become the targets of widespread crime and vandalism, and during the fighting for Aleppo, a bomb fell on the Franciscan complex of the Terra Santa College. There was no loss of life, only damage to the building, and there was no immediate reason to believe the Franciscans had been deliberately targeted.
For already worried Syrian Christians, such incidents do little to reassure their fears. The nightmare scenario is that Syria may follow the path of Iraq, where another Arab dictator fell to be replaced by chaos and instability, creating a void in which extremism has flourished and Christians repeatedly have found themselves on the firing line.
One potentially positive aspect of the utterly new situation created by Assad’s sudden fall is that whoever takes power will be unlikely to look to either Russia or Iran for support, since they’ve been the main backers of Assad’s campaign to suppress dissent. Instead, they may reach out to Western powers for support, perhaps especially France, given the history of the French Mandate after World War I and France’s strong opposition to Assad.
That might give the Western powers, including French President Emmanuel Macron (who could use an opportunity to seem statesman-like, given his domestic political woes) to exercise some leverage to protect Syria’s minority communities. They include not only Christians but also the Druze and the Alawites, who are likely to be the most exposed to retribution since the Assad family comes from the sect.
Defending the Christian presence in Syria is important for spiritual reasons, as the community stretches all the way back to the apostolic era. But it’s also of geopolitical and strategic interest, because a Syria shorn of its Christians would be that much more likely to fall under radical jihadist control, further destabilizing the region and, for that matter, the world.
In other words, there may be reasons for hope about Christian prospects in a post-Assad future. Just don’t expect Syrian Christians to join the Fin de Régime party quite yet.
