Christians Under Threat After Syria’s Second City Falls Into Islamist Hands

Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, has been captured by a jihadist group as part of its offensive against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The regime lost control of the territory—for the first time since the start of the civil war in 2011—on Sunday, December 1st. This prompted fears of a new refugee crisis, while Syria’s Christians are once again likely to be the main target of the Islamist troops.

The civil war in Syria has brought several distinct forces into direct conflict: the government army, the Kurds, Daesh (a.k.a ISIS/ISIL), and a conglomerate of so-called rebel forces from the jihadist movement. One of the latter groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, is responsible for the capture of Aleppo.

The fall of Aleppo is inseparable from its international context. Bashar al-Assad’s government, which until recently held Aleppo, can no longer count on its traditional supporters Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia, which are engaged on other fronts. But it is also suffering from its inability to sustain the mobilisation of a population demoralised and worn down by more than ten years of war.

As Benjamin Blanchard, President of the association SOS Chrétiens d’Orient and an expert on the geopolitical and religious balances in the region, points out, the fall of Aleppo bears witness to the complex interplay of influences in Syria. In a Monday, December 2nd, interview, he told Frontières

We were told for a long time that Iran and Hezbollah had to be destroyed, but it turns out that in Syria they were the main adversaries of Daesh and Al-Qaeda. Today, their power has diminished, for better or worse.