MENA Minorities

Watchmen guard Ras Baalbek against attacks   by Hikmat Samhan, The Daily Star  “I haven’t gone up for three years,” he said. “There are no guarantees. Our east is occupied by Daesh.” Samhan, a senior resident of Ras Baalbek, was using the Arabic acronym of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the Al-Qaeda splinter group that has declared a “caliphate” last month in parts of Iraq and Syria. Now the village, a few kilometers north of Arsal, has set up watch posts to track and guard against Syrian rebels hiding in the nearby hills on the border with Syria. If they attack, the village’s defenders can fight them off for a spell, Samhan said. “Then the village will have woken and the Army would have woken, and maybe help would come from Hezbollah, because wherever they show up Hezbollah shows up,” he said. Ras Baalbek is only a few kilometers from Syria, bordered by a lawless mountain range. Its 10,000 residents are overwhelmingly Christian...

About two weeks ago the Lebanese pro-Assad daily Al-Akhbar featured an interesting report about a possible Druze statelet in Syria by its correspondent Firas Choufi. The report is both food for thought and full of propagandist features. Readers of this blog might remember, that the work of the author was discussed here already in January in the context of The alleged conversion of the Idlib Druze . Syria's Druze reject autonomous statelet despite growing ISIS threats by Firas Choufi, Al - Akhbar  The Druze community is observing the new developments in the region with great unease. The declaration of an Islamic caliphate is enough of a reason for minorities to worry about their future. And as Israeli projects are promoted by Druze collaborators to achieve “the illusion of a Druze statelet,” the Druze in Syria and Lebanon are committed to their nations and national armies, stressing that “We are not border guards for Israel, but we are in the heart of the Resistanc...

ANALYSIS: Iraq's minorities under fire , by IRIN  Inside an Iraqi Christian ghost town , by Christof Putzel, Al Jazeera America Iraqi Christians' flee violence, fear end of long history , by Robin Emmott,  Reuters

Vice magazine report from the Christian city of Qarqoush in Ninawa plains Report about Kurdish Yazidis in Iraq in Arabic by LBCI (Lebanon) Iraq's Assyrian Christians fear ISIS threat to heritage by Mohammed A. Salih, Al Monitor (...)“It was a dangerous situation for Christians,” Um Hanna told Al-Monitor, standing among her family members. “No one knows how the situation in Mosul will end for Christians.” So far, at least, the worst fears of Um Hanna and many others like her have not come true. Many like Um Hanna expected ISIS to engage in a campaign of eliminating non-Muslims — such as Christians and followers of the ancient Mesopotamian Yazidi faith . ISIS, it was assumed, would soon embark on destroying their cultural heritage in Mosul. A number of Christian community leaders Al-Monitor spoke with estimate a couple hundred Christians might still be in Mosul. But, the jihadists seem to have refrained from acts of large-scal...