Syria’s Christians ThreatenedBy Ideology, Geography
Attacks against Syria’s Christians are not only motivated by extremist Islamic ideology, but also because of the strategic area in which they live, writes Jean Aziz.
Throughout the two-year-old Syrian civil war, the world powers as well as the Syrian parties involved have said that the country’s minorities, especially its Christians, face an existential threat. Despite warnings and condemnations of attacks by all sides, however, it looks as if what had long been feared is actually happening. Why? Perhaps because the tragedy of Syria’s Christians is linked to not only fundamentalist and ideological motives but also to geostrategic calculations.
Looking back at statements condemning the targeting of Syria’s Christians, one notices that both the regime and its opponents made such statements as either part of a propaganda effort or in confessing their own mistakes. For its part, the Syrian government has a long history of portraying itself as the protector of its minorities under the pretext that its partisan composition is “secular” and that it has fought Islamic militant groups for decades.
