Syria: “There are no moderate rebels”
A United Nations conference was held in Paris on the victims of religious and ethnic violence in the Middle East (Iraq and Syria) on September 8, 2015, with representatives from around sixty governments, with France and Jordan presiding. On this occasion, Patriarch Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, addressed his remarks to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, and to the Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Judeh, emphasizing the tragic nature of the current situation in the Middle East.
He called for an end to arms trafficking to Iraq and Syria as well as to the sale of weapons to “so-called moderate rebels”, bluntly stating: “There is no such thing as ‘moderate rebels’. There is no moderate action or reaction in times of war.” “It has to be possible for all perpetrators of crimes to be judged, as well as those who finance and protect them,” he continued. On the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Patriarch recalls “that one of the immediate consequences of these conflicts is the influx of refugees into the neighboring countries of Syria or Iraq.” He explained: “In Jordan, there are 740,000 Syrian refugees, and also an estimated 8,000 Iraqi Chaldean refugees.”
Emphasizing the important place occupied by the Catholic Church in Jordan and its diligence in taking charge of refugees, Patriarch Twal denounced their increasingly precarious living conditions. “The Church is on the front lines in aiding Iraqi refugees. But she can do no more, she is tired, Caritas is tired, the refugees are tired. The future is bleak.”
En route to Rome in mid-September, Abp. Antoine Audo, Chaldean Archbishop of Aleppo, declared to Aid to the Church in Need that in the last four and a half years of war, with the massive exodus of Syrians, emigration has not spared the Christian community of Aleppo, which at one time was one of the places with the greatest Christian presence. “Before the crisis, there were 150,000 Christians in the city; today I think that not even 50,000 are left. There is great fear that our community could disappear.” “More than 80% of the Syrian population, including the most qualified individuals, such as physicians or engineers, have lost their employment. Although the middle class, until recently, was poor, now it is living in misery,” he observed.
Abp. Audo denounced the international opinion in favor of prolonging the conflict in Syria: “For years now we have been waiting for a political solution, a bit of hope that the war might end. But at the international level, it seems that there is an intention to continue the war, as it happened in Iraq and Libya. This decision is connected with strategic interests in the Middle East and with the arms trade.” Abp. Audo stresses that the cities most affected by the war, such as Homs, Aleppo and Damascus, have become the theater of daily attacks. “The situation in Aleppo is one of the most dramatic, because we are only 40 kilometers [25 miles] from the border with Turkey, which is continuing to arm and welcome the fundamentalists.”
The Chaldean Archbishop, grateful for the aid that they have received, declared forcefully: “We want to stay in our country. It is therefore necessary to aid the pastoral ministry of the Church on the ground, where this Church is being persecuted and deprived of adequate means with which to carry out her mission.” He called on European governments to find more concrete solutions directly in Syria.
(Sources: apic/lpj/aed – DICI no. 321 dated September 25, 2015)
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