Renewed Islamist insurgency leaves Syria’s Christians on edge

Syria's dwindling Christian community fears another wave of persecution, a decade after ISIS systematically attacked them, as the violence intensifies between the Syrian army and rebel groups.

Rebels led by the group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham launched a surprise attack on Syria's second largest city Aleppo, last week, leading to the eventual withdrawal of government troops.

The rebels have now entered the central city of Hama, while the government’s ally Russia is carrying out air strikes against them. It marks the biggest escalation of the Syrian civil war since 2016.

For some of the country’s Christians, the events unfolding are a reminder of a dark chapter still fresh in the country’s memory. In only a week since the renewed fighting, many Christians say they are once again caught in the middle of a sectarian conflict that they have no part in.

“What is happening is absolute confusion, because Christians, of course, are terrified of Hayat Tahrir. It's an Islamist group. There's nothing to deny in that fact,” said Dara Foielle, a Syrian Assyrian who lived in Syria in early 2011 before moving to Europe and now lives in Beirut. She has long used a pseudonym due to concerns of being targeted by the Syrian government for her human rights activism.

Direct attacks on the Christian community by Hayat Tahrir have not yet been reported, and conflicting narratives have emerged from Aleppo.

Syria was once home to a large Christian population. Before the start of the civil war in 2011, Christians made up about 10 per cent – or slightly more than two million – of the country's 23 million people. Today, the community has shrunk to an estimated 300,000, comprising members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox and Catholic Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and others.

Assyrians, a distinct ethnic group native to parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, sometimes referred to as Syriacs in the country, were among Christians attacked by ISIS and who now fear escalation.

Aleppo has a significant Christian population, as do provincial north-eastern towns such as Qamishli and Hasakah, controlled by the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES/Rojava), and its US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes self-styled Christian militias as well as the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Many Christians from these towns seek out employment or education in the more metropolitan Aleppo. Hayat Tahrir overtook the Syriac Quarter, also called Al Seryan, shortly after its incursion on Aleppo last week, according to the SDF-affiliated Hawar News Agency.

In past outbreaks of conflict, Hayat Tahrir is reported to have confiscated Christian property. The US State Department, in its religious freedoms report last year, said that Hayat Tahrir “committed abuses against members of religious and ethnic minority groups, including the seizure of properties belonging to displaced Christians.” The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Peace, a US-based think tank, also reported the alleged abuses.

Conflicting reports

With lines of communication thinning, conflicting reports have emerged. In a phone call with The National, the Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus denied on Monday reports from members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and on social media of rebel threats to the church in Aleppo, including rumoured commands of a jizya – a tax on non-Muslims by an Islamic state – and obligatory hijab for Christian women.

The Middle East Council of Churches, a group with representation from both the Greek and Syriac Orthodox churches, also denied any direct threats.

“All of us are worried about what will happen with the Christians or the Kurds … about women and the hijab, things like this,” Adam, who lives near the Syriac Quarter and has long interacted with Aleppo’s Christian community, told The National. He uses a pseudonym due to safety reasons.

“For now, nothing like this has happened,” he said. “On Sunday, churches held their services, and a lot of Christians are still in Aleppo. We don’t know what will happen in the next few days, but that’s what has happened in the first 72 hours.”

Adam says the biggest concern at the moment are the unpredictable air strikes on the town.

Basel Kas Nasrallah, former adviser to the Grand Mufti of Syria until the position was dissolved in 2021, told The National that the situation is complex for Aleppo’s diverse population.

“There are Christians whose numbers are around 20,000 and who – rightly so – fear the arrival of people who adopt extremist Islamic thought, which affects their way of life and the exercise of their freedoms, including religious and social freedoms.”

Mr Nasrallah, the first Christian adviser to a Mufti, said that despite individual reported incidents, including a video purportedly showing a rebel fighter pushing down a public Christmas tree, he doesn’t believe there is a direct threat to churches yet.

Residents who recently escaped Aleppo have told The National that electricity has been completely cut off, while others in the city have reported steady electricity since the Hayat Tahrir takeover, the first they’ve enjoyed in years since the start of the civil war.

But pre-emptive panic threatens to boil over.

'We're not prepared for this'

Over the weekend the Syriac Orthodox Church led an initially failed evacuation effort using buses, for students in Aleppo attempting to flee back home to towns such as Qamishli and Hasakah. The church's bishop in Aleppo, Boutrous Kassis, told The National about 200 students sheltered in the archbishopric before finally making it out of the city and arriving in Hasakah on Tuesday night.

Four halls of the Syriac church in Sulaymaniyah, a neighbourhood of Aleppo, became a shelter for the students according to Mr Kassis.

“Our duty is to take care of them. First of all, we must provide energy sources, whether heating or electricity and water. We must also provide food as much as possible,” he told The National.

“We are not prepared for our situation, neither with mattresses nor blankets. The shops were completely closed. Everything we had was distributed to [the students].”

After consulting with the Red Crescent, Mr Kassis said he instructed school buses serving the church’s private school in Aleppo to pick up the youths and bring them back to the church. A tourism company, Izla Tours, based in Qamishli also reportedly supplied buses for evacuation from Aleppo and appeared to post about the efforts on social media. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and Izla Tours did not immediately respond to The National’s request for comment.

“[When] the buses were moving, I got another call from the besieged group, they said that the [surrounding] shooting was increasing.” Air strikes were also reported nearby, he said, and the students arrived at the church “covered in dust and dirt”.

While the Syrian army retreated almost as soon as Hayat Tahrir forces launched their incursion on Aleppo, gunfights between YPG affiliates and Hayat Tahrir reportedly continued for a while longer, until Kurdish groups agreed to retreat eastward to rural areas and back to the Jazirah district in the north-east.

“Thank God, no one was injured by shrapnel,” Mr Kassis said. “There was great terror. Thank God, the buses arrived on time and in about five batches they were able to bring them to a safe area” in Sulaimaniyah.

“Some of those who went home [in Aleppo] are telling us that they will [come] back to sleep here, because they feel safer in the church than in their homes,” he said. “Especially girls who live alone and are mostly university students.”

Assyrians in particular have described being caught in the middle of infighting between various factions as the civil war approaches its 14th year. This is the latest conflict in a series, including Turkey’s cross-border operations aimed at suspected Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions in Syria and Iraq, which often overlap with Assyrian villages; and consistent tensions with components of the Syrian Democratic Forces, like the YPG, in the AANES.

With Turkish-backed forces such as the Syrian National Army (SNA) making significant advances in Aleppo, the conflict is causing concern among the Christians who recall being caught in crossfire between those various groups and their Turkish, or Turkish-backed, counterparts.

“The sectarian narrative in Syria has always been that the minorities have to stick to the lesser of two evils,” said Foielle, who hasn’t been back to her family’s home in Aleppo due to security concerns since the civil war broke out in 2011. Still, she said, Aleppo is a distinct part of the Syrian Assyrian identity.

“It’s a part of home,” she said. “It's a part of our history. And now it's being taken away. The fact that there is something called Hayy Al-Seryan [the Syriac Quarter] … they are part of our identity, and we are part of the city's identity. And this is what is so exhausting.”

One Syrian Assyrian man who lives in Qamishli and left for Sweden only days before the attacks in Aleppo, told The National there was a lingering air of uncertainty. He also requested not to be identified due to security concerns.

“Now the situation is not good. Everyone is talking differently. There is no accurate information about the subject of migration,” he said.

“If I had known that such events would happen, I wouldn't have left. Honestly, I would have stayed in Syria.”