Will Russia’s ‘holy war’ save Syria’s Christians?
by Ed West
Weds. 30
Sep 2015
Vladimir Putin has outfoxed the West in the Middle
East (AP)
America
and Britain have helped to endanger minorities in the Middle East
The war
in Syria has taken a significant turn these past few months, with the
migrant crisis and the intervention of Russia. Even a few months ago one might have expected
Bashar al-Assad’s downfall, and two years ago one would have bet the house on
it.
Now, with
the refugee crisis seriously threatening Europe’s governments and the
almost comic ineffectiveness of American-trained Syrian rebels, Western leaders
seem resigned to accepting Russian’s involvement and some sort of truce that
allows Assad to stay.
Whatever
one thinks of Vladimir Putin, he has certainly outplayed Barack Obama in Syria;
four years after the start of this tragedy Russia is much stronger in the
Middle East, and the United States is weaker. There are reasons for this.
As this piece in the Spectator
and this one in The Week by
Michael Brendan Dougherty point out, Putin’s approach to Syria has actually
been more rational than America’s. The
American and British policy of backing a Gulf-sponsored uprising has been
either woefully naïve or quite cynically designed to curry favour with the
Saudis.
There’s
something especially sinister about the way our governments have followed a
Wahhabi-led scheme to overthrow a secular dictatorship, a revolution that would almost certainly
endanger Christians in the land of St Paul.
For
example, the rebel group al-Nusra
Front, one of the players in the region Russia is now pounding, previously
overran the Christian village of
Maaloula, 40 miles north of Damascus, executing three Christians and
kidnapping a dozen nuns before being driven out by the Syrian army.
During the battle for that
village one Christian addressed the BBC cameraman with these chilling words: “Tell the Europeans
and the Americans that we sent you St Paul 2,000 years ago to take you from the
darkness, and you sent us terrorists to kill us”.
Hey
buddy, you’re welcome.
Conspiracy
theories are common in the Middle East, but it is hardly surprising that people
think there are reasons behind the reasons when Western governments follow
policies so at odds with what most Westerners think is morally right,
and which are also not in their own interests.
In
contrast, Russian policy is brutal, and involves supporting a ruthless
dictatorship. But Russia’s approach is also logically consistent and
demonstrates a clear understanding of what their long-term goals are. Russia
has a firm idea of what Syria will look like in the near future, which
presumably involves lots of posters of President Assad, maybe with a few of
Putin wrestling a shark. The West, meanwhile, is clueless.
That is
perhaps because Western policy in the Middle East is designed to win tomorrow’s
newspaper headlines, such as when Britain and France rushed into overthrowing
Gaddafi in 2011. This may be one of
the strengths of an authoritarian system, where critics of the president tend
to accidentally stab themselves to death. When it comes to Syria, none of the Western
democracies has shown any long-term thinking.
Last month Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic leader, told Aid to the Church in Need that Syria’s Christians are at risk of extinction, with a third of the country’s faithful having left already.
Ninety
per cent of Christians in the city of Homs fled in early 2012 after Islamists
went door to door ordering them out, and that year no Easter services were held
in the city for the first time in millennia.
Russia’s
foreign policy is, no doubt, designed to serve Russia and those who rule
Russia. But if it can bring an end to
the war, and destroy ISIS, the al-Nusra Front and other militant groups, then
Russia might just save Syria’s Christians and so fulfil the country’s historic
promise to protect the region’s Christians.
No wonder
the Russian Orthodox Church has given its support to “the holy war” against
terrorism.
At any
rate, the Russians could hardly do a better job of endangering the
region’s Christians than Britain and America have.