* The names in this story have been changed in order to
protect the identity of the interview subjects.
Thousands
of Syrians are fleeing into neighboring Lebanon --
not entirely due to fear of the Assad regime. The
country's minority Christian population is suffering
under attacks waged by rebel troops. In the Beqaa
Valley in eastern Lebanon, Christian families are
finding temporary refuge, but they are still
terrified.
There had been many warnings that the Khouri* family
wouldn't talk. "They won't say a word -- they're too
scared," predicted the mayor of Qa, a small market
town in northeastern Lebanon where the Khouris are
staying. "They won't even open their door for
journalists," said another person, who had contacted
the family on behalf of a non-governmental organization.
Somehow, though, the interview was arranged in the end.
Reserved and halting, the women described what happened to
their husbands, brothers and nephews back in their
hometown of Qusayr in Syria. They were killed by Syrian
rebel fighters, the women said -- murdered because they
were Christians, people who in the eyes of radical
Islamist freedom fighters have no place in the new Syria.
In the past year and a half, since the beginning of the
uprising against Syria's authoritarian President Bashar
Assad, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled their
homes and sought safe haven abroad. Inside the country,
the United Nations estimates that 1 million people have
left their homes to escape violence and are now internally
displaced. The majority are likely to have fled to escape
the brutality of Assad's troops. Indeed, as was the case
at the start of the Syrian civil war, most of the violence
is still being perpetrated by the army, the secret
services and groups of thugs steered by the state.
With fighting ongoing, however, the rebels have also
committed excesses. And some factions within the patchwork
of disparate groups that together comprise the Free Syrian
Army have radicalized at a very rapid clip in recent
months. A few are even being influenced by foreign
jihadists who have traveled to Syria to advise them. That,
at least, is what witnesses on the ground are reporting in
Qusayr, where fierce fighting has raged for months.
Control of the town has passed back and forth between the
two sides, at times falling into the hands of the regime
and at others of the rebels. Currently, fighters with the
Free Syrian Army have the upper hand, and they have also
made the city of 40,000 residents a place where the
country's Christian minority no longer feels safe.
Campaigns against Christians
"There were always Christians in Qusayr -- there were
around 10,000 before the war," says Leila, the
matriarch of the Khouri clan. Currently, 11 members of the
clan are sharing two rooms. They include the grandmother,
grandfather, three daughters, one husband and five
children. "Despite the fact that many of our husbands
had jobs in the civil service, we still got along well
with the rebels during the first months of the
insurgency." The rebels left the Christians alone.
The Christians, meanwhile, were keen to preserve their
neutrality in the escalating power struggle. But the
situation began deteriorating last summer, Leila says,
murmuring a bit more before going silent.
"We're too frightened to talk," her daughter Rim
explained, before mustering the courage to continue.
"Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners.
They stirred the local rebels against us," she says.
Soon, an outright campaign against the Christians in
Qusayr took shape. "They sermonized on Fridays in the
mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away,"
she says. "We were constantly accused of working for
the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the
jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting
killed."
Grandmother Leila made the sign of the cross. "Anyone
who believes in this cross suffers," she says.
Foreign Jihadists in Combat in Qusayr
It is not possible to independently corroborate the
Khouri's version of events, but the basic information
seems consistent with what is already known. On April 20,
Abdel Ghani Jawhar involuntarily provided proof that
foreign jihadists are engaged in combat in Qusayr. Jawhar,
a Lebanese national and commander with the terrorist group
Fatah al Islam, died that day in the Syrian city. An
explosives expert, Jawhar had been in Qusayr to teach
rebels how to build bombs and accidentally blew himself up
while trying to assemble one. Until his death, Jawhar had
been the most wanted man in Lebanon, where he is
implicated in the deaths of 200 people. Lebanese
authorities confirmed his death in Syria. The fact that
the rebels had worked together with a man like Jawhar
fomented fears after his death that the ranks of
insurgents are increasingly becoming infiltrated by
international terrorists.
The Khouris' decision to flee Syria last year is partly
attributable to the almost daily threats that they, as
well as other Christians in town, began receiving. And yet
it was also a product of the fact that fighting in the
city had simply become unbearable. "The bombs were
falling right in the middle of our neighborhood. We can't
say who was firing them -- the rebels or the army," a
family member says. During a break in the firing on one
bitterly cold winter day, the family finally left.
"We arranged a car and drove to Lebanon. It's only a
45-minute trip."
Rim's husband also fled with them. His fate was sealed
when he drove back to Qusayr on Feb. 9. He had owned a
mini-market in his hometown and he wanted to go back and
get food to take back to his family in exile. His family
only knows what happened to him because of the stories
relatives and friends who remained in Qusayr have shared.
"He was stopped at a rebel checkpoint near the
state-run bakery," says Rim. "The rebels knew he
was a Christian. They took him and then threw his dead
body in front of the door of his parent's house four or
five hours later."
Grandmother Leila makes the sign of the cross again. It
wasn't only her son-in-law who got killed. Her brother and
two nephews were also killed. "They shot one of my
nephews, a pharmacist, in his apartment because he
supported the regime," she says.
Fear of Syrian Compatriots
Thirty-two Christian families have found shelter and
asylum in Qa, which is located only 12 kilometers away
from the Syrian border. Although the city is also
Christian and looks out for those who have fled the rebels
for this reason, the Khouris and their fellow victims
nevertheless live in a state of constant fear. For one,
they can hear the muffled hum of artillery being fired in
nearby Syria. The sound travels well beyond the border and
serves as a constant reminder of what is happening in
their country. On the day of the interview, a column of
smoke could be seen rising above the next mountain range.
A day earlier, a shell hit a gas station on the Syrian
side of the border and it had been smouldering ever since.
Four weeks ago, the Khouris learned that their home in
Qusayr had been completely destroyed after being struck by
a rocket.
But the family's greatest fear is that of their own Syrian
compatriots. As a border town, Qa is a magnet for two
types of refugees, says Mansour Saad. "On the one
hand, you have the Christians who are fleeing from the
rebels," he says. "And then you have the refugee
families of men who are fighting within the ranks of the
FSA." The two enemy groups sometimes clash in
Lebanese exile. "There is a lot of tension between
them," says Saad. "We do our best to keep the
two groups apart."
Like many Lebanese and Syrian Christians, Saad is also a
supporter of the Assad regime. As a religious minority in
the Middle East, Christians don't have much choice other
than to align themselves with a strong leader who can
protect them, Saad says. "The rebels haven't managed
to convince me they are fighting for more democracy,"
the mayor says.
And while there may be a number of open questions about
the Assad regime, like the fact that "there is
certainly no freedom of expression in Syria," he says
the rebels aren't one bit better. There may have been
respectable aims at the start of the uprising, but the
insurgency has since been hijacked by Islamists, the mayor
argues. "And we know the types of Muslims who have
emerged at the head of the rebellion: The ones who would
like to lead the people back into the Stone Age."
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