There may be hope for Syrian Christians

Amid the jubilation unleashed inside Syria and around the world by the fall of the Assad regime last 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% 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, ie, 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.

Mr 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 armoured 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 civilisations 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”.