ICC Note: After fighting with forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rebel forces have gained control of the Syrian city of Kessab. More than 2,000 residents of the largely Christian city have fled, leaving behind a “ghost town.” Reports have emerged of rebels desecrating churches, while others show video of the churches intact.
03/27/2014 Syria (Time) – Kessab, the latest Christian-majority town to fall to rebels, has become the newest focal point of a media war pitting the Assad regime against a splintered opposition, as rebels seek to dispel the perception that they are intolerant of Syria’s religious minorities
It wasn’t long after several Syrian rebel battalions overran the Armenian-Christian town of Kessab, on the border between Syria and Turkey, that apocalyptic reports of looting, abduction and mass murder started appearing in news accounts around the world. “Reports Cite 80 Dead in Kessab; Churches Desecrated,” read one headline in the diasporic Los Angeles-based Asbarez newspaper. Christian residents who had fled to nearby towns told reporters they later called home only to have rebels pick up to tauntingly tell them they had nice furniture and tasty food.
It has become a familiar trope in the Syrian conflict. Islamist rebels launch a string of military offensives against a Christian-majority town to root out government forces there, the latter respond by indiscriminately bombarding the town, residents run for their lives, and the government is quick to portray it as another incident of ethnic cleansing carried out by foreign-sponsored fundamentalists. Lately, however, rebels have been making a concerted effort to counter such claims, in online published statements, and, more often, on YouTube. “[This is] the church of the Armenians in Kessab after its liberation,” one rebel videographer narrated as he took viewers on a video tour of one of the city’s perfectly intact churches a day after rebels took the town. Islam, he declared proudly, teaches respect for all religions, including Christianity. “The jihadist brothers do not harm anyone. This is our religion and this is our Islam.”
Coastal Kessab, the northernmost town in the government stronghold of Latakia province, has become the latest flashpoint in a battle between regime forces and rebels determined to secure Syria’s entire northern border. It has also become the war’s latest ideological battleground, as both sides attempt to craft competing narratives in a race to come out on top, not just militarily but also morally. For all the anguished reports of persecuted Armenian Christians trumpeted by Syrian and international media outlets, few concrete details have emerged. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-government monitoring organization that has tracked casualties throughout the conflict, makes no note of dead civilians. Nor is there any photographic or video proof of destroyed churches in Kessab to date. Most Christians, according to activists and residents, fled long before the fighting started, leaving behind a deserted town.
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