Who Are the True Defenders of the Christian Faith in West Asia?

The Christian Lebanese town of Al Qaa is located in the predominantly Christian district of Baalbek-Hermel, and it is considered Lebanon’s northeastern gateway on the Syrian border. As the Syrian crisis expanded and intensified, thousands of ISIS and Nusra Front fighters took up positions in the high, treacherous mountain ranges stretching between Arsal, Ras Baalbek, and Al Qaa in Lebanon — the Eastern Range. The town of Al Qaa became a constant target for ISIS and Al Qaeda infiltration operations, mortar shelling, and a corridor for transporting car bombs intended to cause bloodshed and destabilisation inside Lebanese territory.

The threat reached a tragic peak on 27 June 2016. The town, with a population of around 3000, was struck by an unprecedented terrorist attack. Four suicide bombers entered the town clad in lethal explosive belts and self-detonated at dawn amidst the civilian population. As the citizens gathered to mourn the morning’s victims around the church in the early evening, another four suicide bombers reached the town square and the church. The second wave murdered five civilians and injured dozens. The entire town was at risk of security collapse and mass displacement.

Immediately after the Al Qaa bombings, Hezbollah increased its military and security deployment along the town’s rear and front lines. Defensive security perimeters and fixed observation points equipped with thermal cameras and night vision goggles were established in the hills and valleys separating the town from the highlands. This prevented the entry of dozens of subsequent ISIS suicide bombers and car bombs. 

Hezbollah provided this support to the local Christian volunteer defence teams, which established watch parties on the roofs of houses on the borders of the town. The operation was conducted with the indirect field and security coordination with Lebanese security agencies.

After the attack on Al Qaa, Hezbollah’s leadership made the strategic decision to end the terrorist military presence in the eastern mountain range permanently. This operation was called ‘If you return, we return’ and it began in August 2017. The Lebanese Armed Forces launched Operation Fajr Al Juroud from the Lebanese side of the border. Hezbollah and the SAA launched their joint operations from the Syrian side opposite the Juroud, the Western Qalamoun region. 

Hezbollah deployed a ‘fire-pincer’ tactic, with the Syrian and Lebanese forces operating out of a centralised operations centre led by Hezbollah field officers. Infantry units supported by artillery and tanks launched a large-scale assault to clear the high altitude caves and mountainous crevasses where ISIS elements were dug in. 

The field coordination and relentless firepower led to ISIS being cornered in a very confined area. Their field command surrendered, and they agreed to deport their surviving members to eastern Syria and to completely clear the mines and IEDs from the Al Qaa and Ras Baalbek regions. Lasting security was restored to the Christian border towns. At the same time, this operation secured Lebanon’s eastern flank and prevented the expansion of ISIS elements to the religiously diverse villages and towns in the northern Bekaa. 

Conclusion — Islam Is Not the Enemy of Christianity 

It would be easy to politicise and criminalise Hezbollah’s intervention to protect religious minorities in Lebanon and Syria during the 14 years of war waged against Syria and her allies by the most disparate and sinister extremist versions of an Islam that exists predominantly in the Zionist-Arab Persian Gulf states. It was incubated there and shuttled across the region by the predator regimes in the West to carry out their filthy war against independent and sovereign nations that have historically resisted the global capitalist neo-feudalist agendas. All this death, bloodshed, and chaos is in service to the national security of a Zionist entity expanding genocide across the wounded region. 

Western media, think tanks, and policy-shaping institutions have tried to distort what Hezbollah sacrificed for their Christian brethren. However, what counters their cynicism and misrepresentation aligned with the enemies of the region are the testimonies from those ordinary citizens of Syria and Lebanon saved from extinction by young men who believe in justice, mercy, and the message of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ called on people to follow the path of God, which is the path of prosperity for human beings. And he warned people against pursuing carnal desires and undermining their spiritual purity through engaging in evil deeds and oppressing others … Those corrupt and oppressive powers who pursued carnal desires, caused wars against people, and deceived them could not tolerate the existence of divine faiths and prophets and those who followed the path of God. Today, too, those kinds of powers would not tolerate the servants of God and the followers of the divine religions or truth seekers. Following Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) requires supporting the truth and abhorring the powers against the truth; hopefully Christians and Muslims anywhere in the world, will keep alive in their life and deeds this great lesson taught by Jesus Christ.

— Ayatollah Khamenei, 1995

Christ in the Night of Glory is a book containing 34 memories of the visits that Ayatollah Khamenei made to the grieving families of Iranian Christian martyrs. During the Western-orchestrated Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the small Armenian Christian minority in Iran suffered 48 killed, 105 wounded, and 35 prisoners taken from within their community. The Assyrian Christians in Iran lost 30 from their smaller community. Both Christian communities perceived the war as a national defence against the powers of injustice and oppression, as they do in 2026. 

One such visit was to the family of Galoust Baboumian, who was working for an oil company in Ahvaz during the Iraqi aggression. His mother had begged him to return to Tehran, fearing what the Iraqis might do to him if they captured Ahvaz. Galoust was killed by Iraqi bombs the same day he had this conversation, and he died holding the photograph of his two children, Varuzhan and Talin. The Supreme Leader entered the family home, and the mother of Galoust busied herself preparing tea and making sure the Leader was taken care of. He gently chided her and said he came only to bring comfort and to talk with the family, not to be waited upon. The mother left the kitchen and joined her family, but when the Leader got up to leave, this is how she described her feelings:

The Leader then rose up from his chair and said goodbye to all of us. His behaviour and manners were so simple and intimate that at that time I was no longer anxious, and my heart had calmed down. Now I wished that this visit could have lasted for hours. I wished I could tell him more about Galoust’s character and Varuzhan’s similarity to his father, but there was no more time as he was leaving when such thoughts went through my head. 

The Covenant of the Prophet Muhammad with the Monks of Mount Sinai is attributed to the Prophet Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah, the Messenger of Allah. The document was written in the handwriting of Imam ‘Ali during the fourth year of the Hijrah which would place us approximately around 625 CE. The monks from St. Catherine’s Monastery consistently upheld its authenticity since the early days of Islam. A summary of the conditions in the covenant has been recorded, part of which is cited below:

It was about this time [after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah] that the Prophet granted to the monks of the Monastery of St. Catherine, near Mount Sinai, his liberal charter by which they secured for the Christians noble and generous privileges and immunities. He undertook himself, and enjoined his followers, to protect the Christians, to defend their churches and the residences of their priests and to guard them from all injuries. They were not to be unfairly taxed; no bishop was to be driven out of his diocese; nor Christian was to be forced to reject his religion; no monk was to be expelled from his Monastery; no pilgrim was to be stopped from his pilgrimage; nor were the Christian churches to be pulled down for the sake of building mosques or houses for the Muslims. 

Compare this to the savage and brutal treatment of Christians in Syria and Lebanon by the (Ahmed Al Sharaa) Mohammed Al Jolani-led Takfiri militia that now rule Damascus and under whose reign, Christians continue to be displaced, murdered, and have their churches desecrated and bombed. 

As Arab-Lebanese Christian analyst Myriam Charabaty wrote in her article covering the regional relations between Muslim and Christian: 

What the West calls a ‘religious war’ is in truth a war between landowners and occupiers; between those who build and those who plunder. And while Western narratives are collapsing under their own hypocrisy, this region’s unity, Christian and Muslim, stands as a living testimony to the question of shared values between Christianity and Islam.

 Cover image: Easter in Maaloula, Syria, 2017. Photo: Vanessa Beeley