MENA Minorities

The just elected twenty third Knesset has some remarkable features: - four Druze MKs will be sworn in on March 16, which means a high degree of overrepresentation of the Druze community (barley 1.6 per cent of the total population according to official numbers). The Druze members will be: Fateen (Fatin) Mulla from Yarka for the Likud. He had been elected before in 2019 and seems the be the new "Druze No.1 representative" of the Likud instead of former minister Ayoob Kara. Gadeer Mreeh (Ghadir Mrih) from Daliyat al-Karmal for Blue and White. The the my knowledge first female Druze parliamentarian in the Middle East ever had also been elected before in 2019. It's worth mentioning that her candidacy was not opposed by the religious leadership. Jabar 'Asakla from the Eastern Galilee town of Mghar for the Joint List. 'Asakla is a secretary of the communist dominated HADASH gathering. He had also been elected first in 2019. Hamad 'Amar from the city of  Sh...

Prominent proponents of the Eastern Orthodox church in Lebanon come out in strong opposition against the declaration of the military intervention of Russia as a 'holy war' by the Russian Orthodox church. Good, but remember the seat of the patriarch of Antioch is Damascus, not Beirut. Syria's 'holy war' by Sami Nader, Al Monitor

General Antoine Lahad, the former head of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), died already a few days ago in his Paris exile. A retired Maronite general of the Lebanese army from Southern Lebanon, he took over the command of the SLA in 1984 following Major Saad Haddad's death from cancer. As debate re burial of Antoine Lahad heats up, reminder of how his predecesssor Saad Hadda was buried #Lebanon http://t.co/xkRWqZiKus — Nadim Houry (@nadimhoury) 14. September 2015 The SLA was for the most time of its existence widely perceived as nothing more than a proxy of Israel and even disliked by many members of the rightist Christian Kataeb and Lebanese Forces. During Lahad's command the secterian composition of the SLA changed from mostly Christian to a more diverse membership with many - often forcibly conscripted - Shiites and Druze within its ranks but the leadership remained mostly Christian. The SLA also operated the prison facility of Khiam , which was notorious for heavy tortur...

The Knesset election took place already five month ago, but the traditional paper about the Arab voting behaviour from Tel Aviv University's Konrad Adenauer Center is a welcome opportunity for a supplement. The great thing about the paper is, that you don't have to compile the data of Arab villages from the election commission yourself (not fun at all if you are not literate in Hebrew). Bayan-The Arabs in Israel Issue no. 5, June 2015 (ed. by Itamar Radai & Arik Rudnizky) Let me just highlight a few numbers: The Joint (Arab) List led by Aymen Odeh reached 82.4% in the whole so called Arab sector (i.e. Arab villages and towns including Druze and Circassians - mixed cities with Jewish majority like Haifa or Akko not counted ). If we add the 0.8% of the minor Arab parties who were not part of the Joint List, the Arab parties achieved 83.2% in the Arab sector. This is a rise of 5% compared to the 2013 election. If we have a comparative look at the 2009 election, wh...

Westerners join Assyrians militia to fight ISIS by Isabel Coles, Reuters (...)The militia they joined is called Dwekh Nawsha - meaning self-sacrifice in the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Christ and still used by Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves the indigenous people of Iraq. A map on the wall in the office of the Assyrian political party affiliated with Dwekh Nawsha marks the Christian towns in northern Iraq, fanning out around the city of Mosul. The majority are now under control of ISIS, which overran Mosul last summer and issued am ultimatum to Christians: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most fled. Dwekh Nawsha operates alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces to protect Christian villages on the frontline in Nineveh province.(...)

As it was mentioned here before, the Greek Orthodox - more correctly called the Rum Orthodox - patriarchate of Jerusalem has a legitimation problem (watch some footage here ). The patriarchate, which covers Jordan (with a sizable Orthodox population) Palestine and Israel, has an almost entirely Arab congregation but the highest ranking clergy including the patriarch is from Greece. It's a long ongoing struggle of emancipation from the Greeks which dates back way to the mandatory period, when the Orthodox community had its own Arab awakening. But the struggle against Greek domination is also deeply connected to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, mainly because the patriarchate is often accused of being to soft to Israeli demands, foremost selling church owned land to the Jewish state. Also the measures against the lately increasing efforts towards the conscription of Christians to the IDF , which is propagated by an Orthodox priest, are lukewarm if any. Remember,  Irenai...

Lebanese Christians remember former glory by Viviane Akiki, An Nahar / Al Monitor

Syria Comment has an interesting piece about the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) by Joel Veldkamp . The auther provides much information I have  been totally unaware of myself and portrays the party much as a Christian militia nowadays (even though the party is secular and one of its two main branches is led by Alawite state minister ʿA li Haidar). I really hope for a part 2 since many questions about the SSNP in contemporary Syria remain. Resurgence of the SSNP in Syria: An Ideological Opponent of the Regime Gets a Boost from the Conflict by Joel Veldkamp, Syria Comment

An in deph report about the current dynamics in Lebanon's Bekaa-valley (covering the Situation in both Shia and Christian villages) can be found at the NYT: Sectarian Wedge Pushes From Syria Into Lebanon by Anne Bernard, The New York Times  

Interview with Basil Ghatas at Al Monitor , who represents the Arab-nationalist Balad-party and is one of two (the other being Hanna Swaid/Hadash) Christian MK's. Btw, I had no idea that he is related to Amzi Bishara, the controversal founder of Balad, who now lives in Qatar after he was investigated for spying on behalf of Hizballah .

A German Tv-team embedded with the chief the the Syriac Military Council (SMC) in Syria's Hasaka province, where the militia fights alongside the Kurdish YPG (in fact the SMC is part of the PYD) against the self proclaimed Islamic State. The militia-chief is a Swiss national of Assyrian heritage (from the Tessin, where many Assyrians live) by the name of Jacob Kosar. He is the former Swiss soldier in charge of the SMC's military training, who was mentioned before on this blog. Kosar estimates the manpower of the militia at 500 and you can also get an idea while watching of how antique the weapons of the SMC are. Edit: Here you can find the article in the German weekly Die Zeit which was produced during the same journey. 

I found this very surprising table by Philip Connor and Conrad Hackett from the Pew Reasearch Center a few days ago on Twitter via Daniel Neep . According to their work, the Christian population in the Middle East (Iran and Turkey are not included) is in fact growing in numbers but much slower than the Muslim majority. Of course the post-2011 events are not included here but I expected a different trend still. Btw who would have assumed that the share of Protestants among Middle Eastern Christians is as high as 7%? Read the full piece here . 

The frontline in the suburbs of Damascus is coming closer to Jaramana, which is inhabited by a large number of Druze and Christians. The city had in 2009 around 190.000 inhabitants but the actual number must be way higher since many refugees live there. The city was also home to a sizeable number of mainly Christian refugees from Iraq but I don't know if they are still there. According to opposition site All4Syria many Druze have fled from Jaramana to still relatively safe Suwaida.  A translated version of the All4Syria article can be found at The Syrian Observer : The events of the night of Saturday, 6 September in Dweilaa, Kashkool and Jaramana, in Damascus, when opposition fighters entered the Dukhania neighborhood, were traumatic for all who witnessed them.   Thousands of people fled their houses minutes after the attack begun, running through the streets of Kashkool, carrying all that they could to Dweilaa or Jaramana.   Upon arriv...

Readers of this blog might remember, that the case of Swiss nationals fighting in Syria for the YPG-affiliated Syriac Military Council had been a topic here already. Now German magazine Focus published a report about this approximately 10 fighters and the support they are receiving from the neutral country. „Kampf ist christliche Pflicht“ Kreuzzug gegen den Terror: Schweizer Christen ziehen gegen IS in den Krieg by Focus Online A very great article by Rania Abouzei for National Geographic deals with the current political situation of the Christians in northern Iraq, including it's leadership, plans for autonomy and the recent phenomena of Christian militias, even though their establishment is (so far) rather symbolic. The latter is a huge difference to the passivity of the Christians during the civil war after the fall of Saddam Hussain, when the Christians reacted with passivity to persecution. This shift is also reflected by the contacts of the Assyrian Democratic Movem...

At Syria Comment Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi provides a solid overview about current militia-related minority dynamics in Syria briefly touching Alawites (including muqawama as-Suriya ), Druze and Christians (in a SSNP- and an Assyrian context). Minority Dynamics in Syria by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, Syria Comment

Gregory Laham, the head of the Melikite Greek Catholic church is one of the highest catholic representatives in the Middle East and a loyal supporter of the Syrian regime. The Patriarch, who is traveling abroad on a regular basis and repeating the sectarian narrative of the regime - i.e. presenting Asad as a saviour of the minorities threatened by Sunni radicals from abroad. Now Syrian Christians in exile have issued an appeal to Laham, calling for an end of the church's collaboration with the regime. "Assad is only protecting himself" by Martina Sabra, Qantara.de  

Mosul's Christians Say Goodbye by Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy Assyrians and Christians under attack in Iraq and Syria  by Stephen Starr, The Irish Times Iraqi Christians Huddle Miles From Militants in Mosul , AFP   Iraqi Christians find refuge in ancient monastery by Jane Arraf, AlJazeera America Militants' advance threatens Christians in Iraq  by Arwa Damon, CNN

Clashes broke out in Homs between the National Defence Forces (NDF) and militiamen of the Syrian Social Social Nationalist Party, who are both fighting on the side of the regime. With the increasing importance of militias for the regime, the factionalism of the former is increasing. This leads to the assumption, that such incidents might happen more frequently in the future, since the army (and the revolutionary guards) are extremely overstretched and find it difficult to control their allied militias. What makes this episode even more interesting is the sectarian component: while the NDF here is mostly Alawite, the SSNP in Homs and nearby Wadi an-Nasara ("Valley of the Christians") has a large Christian (mostly Greek Orthodox) following. Fighting among pro-Assad groups points to factional future by Lauren Williams, The Daily Star BEIRUT: Fierce clashes erupted between pro-Assad militias from the National Defense Forces and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Ho...

Over the last year it became pretty clear that the Israeli government aims to give the Arab-Christian population a Druze like status - i.e. mandatory conscription and a legal seperation from the Arab population, which would then be only Muslim. The efforts reached have t o introduce mandatory conscription have reached a preliminary peak with the sending of volutary draft notices to yound Christian Arabs. IDF to send 'voluntary draft notices' to Christian Arabs  by Gili Cohen, Haaretz The Israel Defense Forces will send draft notices to Christian Arab teenagers over the next several weeks in an attempt to increase voluntary enlistment within the community.  Christian Arab citizens of Israel are not subject to compulsory military service. They can volunteer, but few do. According to an Army Radio report on the new policy, every year about 2,000 Christian Arabs reach the...