Syrian Christians and other minorities throughout the region have well-established reasons to worry about the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime. The toppling of the Syrian government was sudden, performed by militants with ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS, and looked exactly like another of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s proxy regime-change wars—which in the past have again and again led to the rape, slaughter, and ethnic cleansing of minorities in nations like Iraq and Libya.
Speaking out against that kind of cynical violence-by-proxy has been a hallmark of President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric—and I have no doubt his humane attentiveness to the concerns of Middle Eastern peoples played a vital role in his recent reelection. After all, it’s why Syrian and other Middle Eastern ex-pats in the U.S. voted for him in record numbers.
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The Western corporate media has, for years, done the bidding of the same shadowy and unaccountable deep state that runs the Biden administration. One of their tricks is to euphemistically call even the worst Jihadist thugs in Syria simply “freedom fighters” and “rebels” in order to legitimize the West’s regime-change ambitions.
In fact, many “freedom fighters” aren’t even Syrian. They’re Jihadists from anywhere and everywhere. Mercenaries. “Death-to-America” types. Barbarians and thugs who rape local women and girls at the first opportunity, then sell them in open markets.
Trump, on the other hand, has always been among those who suspect the establishment’s motives and look out in solidarity for the people on the ground who stand to lose the most in America’s clumsy chess moves and gambles.
Trump’s running mate, likewise, is already raising the alarm about the threats posed to Syrian Christians in post-Assad Syria:
It’s a legitimate concern, and one that Trump already understood before J.D. Vance left graduate school. As Trump wrote in 2013: “Remember, all these ‘freedom fighters’ in Syria want to fly planes into our buildings.”
But now, high off the fumes of their regime-change coup in Syria, the deep state is relishing the opportunity to perform another shift—this one in the U.S., and, if it were possible, even among the Trump team as he prepares to finalize his cabinet and its positions ahead of the January 20 inauguration.
Guys like Lindsey Graham can hardly contain themselves.
Trump has a tall order ahead of him: put the Lindsey Grahams in their place, both within Washington, D.C., and in the various stations with influence over the fate of the Middle East.
But Trump’s victory just over a month ago provides all the political and moral will needed to take action now.
As I wrote with John Zmirak this week,
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In the last push of the 2024 election, Jason Jones traveled to Pennsylvania to meet with American voters in Syrian Christian churches, whose sisters, cousins, and elderly parents now hide in their homes and wait for al Qaeda to come burn their churches down. …Those Pennsylvania voters saw today’s terror coming. Syriac Christian and Trump voter Dennis Atiyeh told Jones, “We love Donald Trump. He is the only politician who actually cares about peace and religious freedom instead of profits for arms manufacturers. The Democrats, the neocon Republicans…they don’t see people. They see little pawns on a chess board, and think that is a game. But the Gospel tells us ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ God bless Trump, if he can bring peace.”
What does all this mean for Syria?
As Zmirak and I also argued, Trump is well positioned now to pursue “a Swiss-style solution” there:
Each of the regions now controlled by one faction or other would form a kind of “canton,” with most of the powers that normally go to a central state. These cantons would be linked by a loose confederation, designed to keep peace among them. (Some other Alawite, not Assad, should be its figurehead.) People unhappy in the canton where they ended up would likely vote with their feet, and move to a friendlier region.
The Swiss model is already present in Syria. The Federation of Northern Syria, led by Kurds allied with Christians and tolerant Arabs, is composed of self-governed cantons in voluntary association. It’s the one part of Syria where women take part in politics, all religious groups are free, and power stays close to the people.
