By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
AMMAN, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Syrian rebel fighters withdrew on
Thursday after briefly capturing a historic Christian town in
the centre of the country as part of a campaign to take control
of strategic mountains near Damascus, opposition sources said.
Several rebel brigades, including a contingent of the al
Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, swept into the town of Maaloula in the
Qalamoun mountains on Wednesday after overrunning a roadblock
manned by troops and militia loyal to Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, the sources said.
The attack highlighted the delicate position of the
Christian minority in Syria, where members of the clerical
hierarchy have expressed public support for Assad.
The Christian community, while fearing an Islamist takeover,
has remained largely in the sidelines since 2001, when it staged
peaceful protests against four decades of rule by the Assad
family.
Few Christians have taken up arms in the civil war that has
torn Syria over the past two and a half years, which broadly
pits Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam,
against the Sunni majority.
A sizeable number of the inhabitants of Maaloula, as well as
Sarkha and Jabaadeen, two nearby Sunni towns, still speak
Aramaic, the language of Christ.
“That roadblock at the entrance of Maaloula started hitting
our mountain position a few days ago. It was silenced. We never
had any intention of staying in Maaloula,” said rebel commander
Abu Khaled from the Baba Amro Revolutionaries Brigade, named
after a district of the city of Homs to the north.
Most people in Maaloula fled when the fighting erupted
around the roadblock and Syrian fighters bombarded the area on
Wednesday. Ten Assad loyalists were killed, but no death toll
was immediately available for the rebel side, activists said.
“An army unit eliminated members of an terrorist group
belonging to the al-Nusra Front northeast of Maaloula and
destroyed the tools they use in their crimes,” said Syria’s
official state news agency.
Restrictions by Syrian authorities on independent media make
verifying these accounts difficult.
Rebel brigades have intensified their operations in the past
week against army bases in the foothills of the Qalamoun
mountains.
REBELS EMBOLDENED
The rebels have been emboldened by Assad’s forces
retrenching in response to the threat of U.S. military action in
the wake of the nerve gas attack on Damascus districts that
killed hundreds of civilians, according to opposition sources.
Samia Elias, a resident who stayed in Maaloula, said by
phone that Syrian troops and the al-Lijan al-Shaabiya, a
pro-Assad militia composed of people from Maaloula, briefly
exchanged fire after the rebels had left.
“They are blaming each other for the roadblock and those
manning it having been wiped out,” she said.
“For months the rebels have been around Maaloula but there
has been a sort of an understanding with the townspeople that
they would not enter. To be fair, they do not seem to have
touched churches or homes.”
Maaloula has several churches and important monasteries as
well as the Greek Orthodox nunnery Mar Thecla, visited by many
Christians and Muslims, drawn by its reputation as a holy place
where the sick would be miraculously healed.
Pelagia Sayaf, the Mother Superior at Mar Thecla, told
Lebanon’s al-Jadid television that reports of Christian holy
places being pillaged by rebels were not accurate.
However, video footage showed a rebel fighter firing a
machine gun from the centre of Maaloula into a cliff, and a
group of rebels carrying rocket propelled grenades and flashing
victory signs in the centre of the town.
“Maaloula has been totally cleansed from the dogs of
Bashar,” a rebel says in one of the videos.
Other footage showed a rebel commander instructing a group
of fighters not to target civilians or the Christian symbols in
the town.
“The rebels have achieved their mission of removing the
roadblocks surrounding Maaloula,” said Faek al-Mir, a Syrian
opposition campaigner. “We ask all the residents who have left
the town to go back. Their passage back is safe.”
Some Christians have been prominent in their opposition to
Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad. But many fear they
will be dominated by hardline Islamists and their livelihood
destroyed if Assad is toppled.
The Alawite minority’s grip on power was cemented in the
1960s by the elder Assad, who forged complex alliances with the
Christian ecclesiastical establishment, Sunni clerics and
members of the Sunni merchant class in Damascus and Aleppo.
Syria has about 850,000 Christians, about 4.5 percent of the
population. Of those, about 400,000 are Catholics of the Syrian,
Greek Melkite, Maronite, and Chaldean and Armenian churches.
(Christopher Wilson)
