President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.  20500

December 24, 2012

Dear Mr. President,

“Israel must be wiped off the map!”  – proclaims the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  This threat of genocide, combined with the development of Iran’s nuclear capacity, is rightly taken seriously by the United States. Throughout your presidency you have made it clear that the United States is committed to preventing the eradication of the people of Israel.

There is, however, another threat of genocide in the Middle East – one which neither you, nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have publicly acknowledged. It is the religious cleansing of Christians and other religious minorities from the Sunni-dominated Middle East.

Already, last year, former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy drew the attention of the international community respectively to acts of “genocide”, and “a perverse program of religious cleansing” directed at Middle Eastern Christian communities.

Today, the crisis of religious cleansing is particularly acute in Syria. The general chaos and confusion of civil war harms all Syrians irrespective of religion. But members of religious minorities - roughly 25% of the population - are targeted for murder, abduction, displacement and humiliation with increasing frequency and ferocity. Religious cleansing proceeds apace under the publicly proclaimed slogan, “Alawites to the grave, and Christians to Beirut!” – a proclamation, like President Ahmadinejad’s, of genocidal intent.

Some of the inciters and perpetrators of religious cleansing in Syria are driven by fanatical adherence to a genocidal ideology of jihad. Others find inspiration in a widespread and deep-seated culture of Sunni Muslim supremacism. They represent the most powerful elements within the Sunni-dominated rebel forces, extending far beyond the recently sanctioned al-Nusra Front militia. These Islamist militias, with the non-lethal backing of the United States and the lethal support of our country’s closest regional Sunni allies – in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey - strive to overthrow the secular dictatorship of Bashar al Assad and replace it with a Sunni Islamic state to serve as a barrier to Shiite Iran.

It is a tragic irony that Syrian religious minorities feel compelled to cling to the brutal Assad dictatorship - not out of love for the regime, but for survival in the face of religious cleansing from the side of American-supported Islamists. The failure of the Syrian armed opposition and its patrons in the “Friends of Syria” international contact group to gain the confidence of minorities has prolonged the life of the Assad regime and has inflicted more death and destruction on the Syrian people.

In a letter dated August 1, 2012, I urged you to act decisively to forestall genocide in Syria.  Since then, the religious cleansing of Christians and other religious minorities in Syria has gained momentum.

In the meantime, others have issued their own genocide warnings regarding Syria. Speaking recently at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, former Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith  –  the bearer of impressive anti- genocide credentials –  declared: “The next genocide in the world will likely be against the Alawites in Syria”.

Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, elaborated on Ambassador Galbraith’s observation, stating on the 15th of November 2012 in a  New York Times article entitled “The World’s Next Genocide”:

“Growing numbers of foreign Sunni extremist fighters are battling not just to rid Syria of Mr. Assad, but to religiously cleanse it. As a result, many Syrian Christians now fear that their fate will mirror that of Iraqi Christians, who were largely forced out of Iraq by war and sectarian terrorism. The city of Homs was once home to 80,000 Christians; there are now reportedly fewer than 400.

Mr. Adams’ reference to the near destruction of the Iraqi Christian community during the US-led Operation Iraqi Freedom is a sobering reminder of the grisly fate that awaits the non-Sunni religious minorities of Syria as the institutions and infrastructure of the state are degraded and Sunni supremacist armies expand their control of territory.

Only this week, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic issued an alarming report, confirming that the revolution in Syria “has become overtly sectarian.” The Commission concludes:

“Entire communities are at risk of being forced out of the country or of being killed inside the country. With communities believing ­– not without cause – that they face an existential threat, the need for a negotiated settlement is more urgent than ever.”

The prospect foreseen by the UN Commission corresponds to the definition of genocide as found in the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which the United States is a signatory.

What power, Mr. President, is going to undertake responsibility for the prevention of genocide and the restoration of security for the terrorized people of Syria as the war there becomes more brutal and sectarian?

While the current crisis of religious cleansing is most acute in Syria, we now see in Egypt – ruled by a new US-backed Islamist dictatorship – an upsurge in anti-Christian hate speech, pogroms against Christians, and the religious cleansing of the pyramid village of Dahshour. Conditions for anti-Christian acts of genocide currently exist in Egypt.  

Employing the refrain “Never again!,” you pledged on the 23rd of April at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to use the many instruments at your disposal to prevent genocide. You furthermore announced the establishment of a new instrument  –  the interagency Atrocities Prevention Board, headed by Samantha Power – and revealed the imposition of tough U.S. sanctions against the Syrian and Iranian regimes.

In your Holocaust Museum speech you also declared:

“I will always be there for Israel…  When faced with a regime that threatens global security and denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel, the United States will do everything in our power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

But there was no such undertaking then, or subsequently, to “always be there” for the existentially threatened religious minorities of the Islamic Middle East. Nor was there a commitment to “do everything in our power to prevent” potential perpetrators of genocide from having the means to eradicate them. Meanwhile, the death and displacement toll mounts.

CSI urges you act to prevent genocide in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East before it is too late. You can do so by commissioning Samantha Power and the new Atrocities Prevention Board to prepare a genocide prevention policy based on: 

1. Crisis management in cooperation with Russia and other Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.

2. Constructive participation at the Swiss-proposed international conference in Geneva in early 2013 with a view to reaching agreement on the employment of all international instruments for the prevention of genocide and the protection of endangered peoples in Syria, as called for on June 14 by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisors on the Prevention of Genocide and on the Responsibility to Protect.

3. The extension of the United States’ punitive anti-Assad sanctions to all Syrian opposition armed forces – and their financiers and weapons suppliers – who incite and/or wage a religiously supremacist jihad.

4. Vigorous and open encouragement of the “Friends of Syria” and the armed Syrian opposition to provide genuine guarantees for the survival and freedom of Syria’s religious minority communities, and to work to achieve a negotiated settlement that encompasses all the Syrian people.

5. Reduction of military aid to Egypt’s Islamist regime until such time as a constitutional consensus is reached for the defense of personal freedom and minority rights.

6. An international campaign to combat the genocidal ideology of jihad and the region’s culture of religious supremacism.

Announcing this policy next month in your State of the Union address would send a powerful message to those who are now threatening the survival of the Middle East’s oldest religious communities.

At the Holocaust Museum, Mr. President, you repeated a truth of which American policy-makers must never lose sight: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United State of America.”

This Christmas Eve, CSI urges you to serve the United States’ interests and fulfill her moral responsibilities by making a firm commitment to prevent the religious cleansing of Christians and other religious minorities from the Middle East.

Respectfully,

Dr. John Eibner
CEO, Christian Solidarity International-USA

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