Every day at sunset, dozens of residents of a small Lebanese village on the border carry automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case Muslim extremists from neighboring Syria attack.
“We all know that if they come, they will slit our throats for no reason,” one villager said as he drove through the streets of Qaa, a rifle resting next to him.
For months, Lebanese Christians have watched with dread as other Christians flee Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, fearing their turn will come next. Fears multiplied after militants from Syria overran a border town last month, clashing with security forces for days and killing and kidnapping Lebanese soldiers and policemen.
Now, for the first time since the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, Lebanese Christians are rearming and setting up self-defense units to protect themselves, an indication of the growing anxiety over the expanding reach of radical Muslim groups. Across the Middle East, communities as old as Christianity feel their very survival is now at stake, threatened by militants of the Islamic State group rampaging across Iraq and Syria.
In Iraq, thousands of Christians have fled their homes after they were made to choose between leaving, converting to Islam or facing death. For the first time in centuries, Iraq’s Nineveh region and the provincial capital of Mosul have been emptied of Christians. After they left, the militants spray-painted their houses with the letter “N” for Nasrani — an archaic term used to refer to Christians — marking the homes as Islamic State property.
In Syria, thousands of Christians have been displaced during the three-year conflict. Christian towns and villages have come under attack by jihadists, most recently the historic central town of Mahradeh. Muslim fighters in Syria rampaged through the ancient town of Maaloula, near Damascus, earlier this year, destroying historic churches and icons. Christians in the militant stronghold of Raqqa were forced to pay an Islamic tax for protection.
Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria are now sheltering in Lebanon, sensing safety in a pluralistic country that has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East. Lebanon is also the only Arab country with a Christian head of state.
The fear has spread to Lebanon as well. This week, after a video was posted online showing a group of boys burning an Islamic State flag in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut, vandals spray-painted the outer walls of several churches in northern Lebanon with the words: “The Islamic State is coming.”
In Qaa and Ras Baalbek, two villages on the border with Syria, the anxiety is palpable. Many of the thousands of expatriates who used to spend the summer here stayed away this year. Restaurants and the villages’ main squares were deserted on a recent day.
The sale of weapons on the black market has climbed sharply. The arming effort is backed by some leftist and communist Lebanese militias who have long had weapons. The Shiite group Hezbollah has also indirectly supported such efforts, seeing the communities as a first line of defense for Shiite towns and villages in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region.
Sitting in his house few kilometers away from areas controlled by jihadist fighters in Syria, Suleiman Semaan, a political activist in Ras Baalbek, said the mobilization in the village was purely for self defense.
He and other residents said they were especially alarmed by an attack last month in which militants from Syria overran the Lebanese border town of Arsal for several days, killing and abducting a number of soldiers and police. The attack was the worst spillover of Syrian violence since the uprising began in March 2011.
“We don’t want to attack anyone, and we don’t want anyone to attack us,” Semaan said.
In Syria and Iraq, Christians have always been a scattered minority, and rather than mobilize to protect themselves, they enjoyed relative security for decades under the rule of secular dictatorships. Now, as vast swaths of both countries have fallen out of government control, many are looking elsewhere for safety.
In northeastern Syria, small units have been fighting under the umbrella of the People’s Protection Unit, a Kurdish militia. However, most Christians in Syria, as well as Iraq, say they simply do not have the numbers, arms or training to combat the battle-hardened Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The number of Christians in the Middle East has been in decline for decades because of waves of attacks, regional upheaval and sectarian tensions.
Iraq was home to an estimated 1 million Christians before the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Since then, militants have frequently targeted Christians across the country, bombing churches and killing clergymen. Under such pressure, many have left, and church officials now put the community at about 450,000.
During a visit to Iraq on Aug. 18, Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Gibran Bassil, a member of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, urged Christians not to leave the region.
“If Christianity becomes extinct in Iraq, it will end in the whole region. Iraq and our region will lose pluralism,” Bassil said.
For Sahira Hakim, a housewife from Baghdad who is now in Lebanon applying to immigrate to a third country, there is no going back to Iraq, and her native country will never be the same.
“We Christians are like roses. If you remove them from a garden, it will not be beautiful anymore,” she said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese