Endnotes: Syria: The Burden of Memory and the Hope of the Gospel

1. For more details on the history of Syria, see “Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad,” William R. Polk, The Atlantic, Dec.10, 2013. (University of Chicago Professor of History and U.S. Diplomat)

2. Ibid, Polk.

3. Lebanon still uses the census data from 1932 because religious balance is a sensitive issue. “International Religious Freedom Report - Lebanon,” 2001 Report on International Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State, 26 Oct. 2001.

4. Raja Shehadah and Penny Johnson: Shifting Sands, 2016, and Roger Hardy: The Poisoned Well, 2016.

5. Brian VandeMark, American Sheikhs: Two Families, Four Generations, and the Story of America’s Influence in the , Prometheus Books, 2012. p.10.

6. Ibid. p.12.

7. Guide to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Board of Foreign Missions, Department of Missionary Personnel Records, 1832-1952, Philadelphia, PA.

8. “Mission directed to all peoples of the Near East, including large Arab, Persian, and Turkish populations. Syria and Persia Mission units transferred to Presbyterian Board U.S.A. in 1871. The Mission among Turkish Muslims continues, and since 1915 the American Board has undertaken some responsibilities in Syria and Lebanon, in most cases in cooperation with the Presbyterian Board.” American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Overview, 1810- 1985, Congressional Library.

9. Deanna Ferree Womack, Syrian Protestants and the Case of the Church: Re- imagining the American Missionary Encounter in Ottoman Syria. Syrian Studies Association Bulletin. Vol 19: No. 1 (2014).

10. “Presbyterians Do Mission in Partnership,” 2003 General Assembly Policy Statement, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

11. The severe underfunding of the U.N. relief efforts in the region has made registering with U.N. agencies less attractive since those receiving aid are not supposed to work, and many fear exposure and deportation from their countries of refuge.

12. “In Northeast Syria, A Christian Community Fights for Survival.” Dominique Soquel, The Christian Science Monitor, April 10, 2019. Summarized in The Christian Century, May 22, 2019. 13.Timeline of CIA Interventions in Syria, Rozeff, Michael S., Global Research, April 18, 2018.

14. John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, Chicago: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, p. 164.

15. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. Administrator of , issued two sweeping orders in May 2003: one outlawed the Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from their government posts; the other dissolved Iraq’s 500,000-member military and intelligence services. In November 2003 Bremer established a Supreme National De-Baathification Commission to root out senior Baathists from Iraqi ministries and hear appeals from Baathists who were in the lowest ranks of the party’s senior leadership. The party’s foremost leaders — some 5,000 to 10,000 individuals — were not permitted to appeal their dismissals. [Iraq: DeBaathification, Backgrounder by Sharon Otterman, February 22, 2005, Council on Foreign Relations].

16. “How the Islamic State Evolved in an American Prison,” Terrence McCoy, Washington Post, Nov. 2014.

17. “The Hidden Hand Behind the Islamic State Militants? Saddam Hussein’s,” Liz Sly, Washington Post, 2015.

18. “Saddam's Former Amy Is Secret of Baghdadi's Success,” Samia Nakhoul, Reuters, 2015.

19. Up to 41,490 international citizens from as many as 809 countries are thought to have joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria between April 2013 and June 2018, according to a report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, published in 2018.

20. See Rami Khouri, "Can Palestine Still Inspire the Arab World?" in Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Toughest Questions, edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner, OR Books, 2018; and Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Pluto Press, 2018; and “The Demography of the Arab World and the Middle East from the 1950s to the 2000s; A Survey of Changes and a Statistical Assessment,” Dominique Tabutin and Bruno Shoumaker. Cairn Info International Edition. Vol. 60, 2005/5.

21. William R. Polk, "Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad," The Atlantic, Dec. 10, 2013.

22. The Sunnah refers to the example of Muhammad, while the Ummah is the Muslim community.

23. The Sufis are not a distinct sect within Islam but represent a more spiritual and mystical dimension with a following among both Sunnis and Shias. There are no reliable figures on the proportion of Muslims worldwide who follow Sufi practices.

24. Nikolaos van Dam, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria, I.B. Tauris, 2017.

25. It Is Not Sectarianism, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, New Yorker, March 11, 2019.

26. Main Factions in Syria - U.K. Parliament background briefing data. 27. Those population transfers of Greeks and Armenians (the indigenous Chrisitians) have now been called ethnic cleansing.

28. The recent election of a Mayor for Istanbul in June 2019 showed that Erdogan’s dominance is not as pervasive as previously thought. The first outcome of the election was thrown out when the candidate from a rival party won, but the repeated election gave the rival a higher margin than the first.

29. “Russia's Gazprom says offshore part of TurkStream is complete,” Reuters, November 19, 2018.

30. Amnesty International, January 28, 2019.

31. This is the Congregational/United Church of Christ entity, as noted in footnote 9.

32. “With Guns, Cash and Terrorism, Gulf States Vie for Power in Somalia,” - Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, July 22, 2019.

33. See The Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov (Anchor Books, 2007) for a full account of this defining crisis in the Gulf.

34. “Is the Qatar-Iraq-Turkey-Europe Natural Gas Pipeline Project Feasible?,” ORSAM Center for Middle Eastern Studies; and Iran–Iraq–Syria pipeline.

35. “Qatar Won the Saudi Blockade,” Hassan Hassan, Foreign Policy, June 4, 2018.

36. Although it has a romantic ring to it, “the Levant” is a French term which is a vestige of colonialism. It is a relative term referring to “the land where the sun rises” because the sun rises in the east (Lever, to rise, in French). But the Sun doesn't rise in "the Levant" if you are in that region of course; it rises further to the east. So it's relative to where you are physically, or where you are from. The new way of referring to the region is through the use of geographic terms that are not relative, such as SW Asia. MENA (Middle East North Africa) is beginning to be dropped for SWANA, SW Asia, N. Africa.

37. Fisk, Robert, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, Oxford University Press, 1990.

38. Responsibility for the assassination of Hariri has never been definitively proven. See correspondent Nicholas Blanford’s summary: “Is Hezbollah right That Israel Assassinated Lebanon's Rafik Hariri?,” Nicholas Blanford, Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 2010.

39. Governance and Politics of Lebanon, Fanack.com

40. The Golan Heights were captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 but have been viewed by the United Nations as Syrian lands; however, in 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump “gave” the Golan Heights to Israel by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the region. In May 2019 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced he would build a settlement in the Golan and name it after Mr. Trump. 41. “Iran's Axis of Resistance Rises, How It's Forging a New Middle East,” Payam Mohseni and Hussein Kalout, Foreign Affairs, Jan. 24, 2017.

42. Payam Mohseni and Hassan Ahmadian, "What Iran Really Wants in Syria," Foreign Policy, May 10, 2018.

43. These Presbyterian brothers held huge powers as they were simultaneously responsible for American overt and covert foreign policy through the Department of State and the CIA.

44. Described in detail in Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Wiley, 2008.

45. “The Tension Between America and Iran, Explained,” By Megan Specia and Rick Gladstone, The New York Times, May 16, 2019.

46. Ibid, p.204.

47. Azerbaijan, bordering NW Iran, and Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, all in Central Asia.

48. Kerimov, Gasym, “Islam and Muslims in Russia Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” Religion, State, and Society, Vol. 24 Issue 2-3, 1996.

49. “The Recent History of Terrorist Attacks in Russia,” Adam Taylor, The Washington Post, April 3, 2017.

50. ’s President Nasser nationalized the canal in an effort to end colonial domination. See Office of the Historian, Dept. of State, The Suez Crisis, 1956.

51. “The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. Response, 1978–1980” - Department of State, Office of the Historian.

52. Putin’s U.N. General Assembly speech, The Washington Post, September 28, 2015.

53. The Link Between Putin’s Military Campaigns in Syria and Ukraine, Edward Delman, The Atlantic, October 2, 2015.

54. Syrian opposition figure says ceasefire never took hold, Reuters, September 19, 2016.

55. Definition from christianzionism.org.

56. “Unprecedented: Trump Gave Israel the Golan as a Gift and Asked for Nothing in Return,” Aluf Benn, Haaretz, March 26, 2019.

57. “The Arab Awakening,” Rami Khouri, The Nation, August 24, 2011.

58. “Syria: A Kingdom of Silence.” Cajsa Wikstrom, Aljazeera, February 2011. See wikipedia for الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام , transliteration: Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam .59 more. Can also be translated as "The people want the fall of the regime," or “The regime must fall.”

60. Guide: Syria Crisis - BBC News, April 2012.

61. “Syria Says Seizes Weapons Smuggled from Iraq,” Reuters, March 11, 2011.

62. “Did the Arab Spring Revolutions Bring More Violence to the Middle East?” blog post by Peter Ackerman and Maciej Bartowski, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Oct. 8, 2017.

63. “Questions and Answers About Syria’s Secret Torture Prisons,” compiled by Kasia Pilat, The New York Times, May 17, 2019.

64. The term “political Islam” has been called redundant, but Islam, like other religious traditions, has rules and recommendations for how to establish a just human society. The issues of how to allocate finite resources is an ethical, social, and political concern for Muslims. In that sense, Muslims refuse to reduce religion to a privatized realm that becomes irrelevant to larger social and political concerns. While in a post-Enlightenment Protestant tradition many Western Christians think in terms of “separation of church and state,” keeping religious authorities from the exercise of government power, that mindset would have been unthinkable to pre-modern Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. In that sense, many Muslims object to a split division between realms deemed to be “political” and “apolitical” and do not partition political and social systems as Western traditions do.

65. Robin Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami, Leila, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, 2018, p.127. They cite the Syrian Network for Human Rights, “Civilian Victims Toll.”

66. Van Dam, Nickolaos, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria, I.B. Tauris, 2017.

67. This confusion is taken up in the Leader’s Guide for discussion purposes. It is impossible to provide a clear listing of the changing set of combatants.

68. Burning Country, p. 85.

69. These groups included Jaysh al-Islam (Ghouta suburb of Damascus), Liwa al-Tawheed (Aleppo), Suqour al-Sham, Liwa al-Haqq, and the Kurdish Islamic Front.

70. Burning Country, p. 109.

71. Kurdish military forces, their name literally meaning “those who face death.”

72. A Caliphate is territory commanded by a Caliph, or successor to the Prophet Mohammed. A rightful caliph can demand the allegiance of all Muslims.

73. The same was said about the Iranian revolution. It seems Western leaders and academics are blinded by their own framing. 74. Syrian Centre for Policy Research (SCPR) with the support of UNDP and UNRWA, “Syria: Alienation and Violence, Impact of Syria Crisis Report 2014,” March 2015.

75. Burning Country, 155.

76. Human Rights Watch Report, Events in Syria, 2018.

77. The High Cost of Failure in Idlib, Sara Kayyali, Human Rights Watch, May 14, 2019.

78. “For 10 years, We've Lied to Ourselves To Avoid Asking the One Real Question,” Robert Fisk, The Independent, Sept. 3, 2011.

79. “What Went Wrong?”, Bernard Lewis, The Atlantic, January, 2002.

80. Remarks at the American University in , Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Cairo, Egypt, June 20, 2005, Department of State Archives.

81. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

82. Max Blumenthal, The Management of Savagery: How America’s Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump, Verso, 2019.

83. “The Men from JINSA and CSP,” Jason Vest, The Nation, August 15, 2002.

84. Blumenthal, See chapters 4, 5, and 6.

85. “Trump’s Support of Israel’s Annexation of the Golan,” Helena Cobban, Mondoweiss, March 26, 2019.

86. “Trump Vetoes Measure To Force End to U.S. Involvement in Yemen War.” Mark Landler and Peter Baker, The New York Times, April 16, 2019.

87. “For Trump, the Relationship with Saudi Arabia Is All About Money,” Karen DeYong, The Washington Post, Nov. 19, 2018.

88. A Portrait of Jewish Americans, Pew Research Center.

89. “White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War,” Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, The New York Times, May 13, 2019.

90. Why Is Turkey Betting on Russia?, Galip Dalay, Brookings, July 15, 2019.

91. “Trump Speaks with Erdogan after Threatening To 'Devastate' Turkey's Economy,” Zachary Cohen, CNN, January 14, 2019.

92. Quotation of the Day: “Trump’s Order To Pull Troops Riles All Sides,” The New York Times, Dec. 27, 2018.

93. “The Syrian War Is Over, and America Lost,” Steven A. Cook, Foreign Policy, July 2018. 94. “The Endless Cost of Washington’s Lost Wars” (American forces are engaged in an open- ended war on terror in 80 countries, costing nearly $6 trillion since 2001) - William J. Astore, The Nation, Jan. 28, 2019.

95. Lecture delivered at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs of Brown University on 11 March 2019, and at the Harvard Middle East Seminar, part of the Weatherhead Center, on 28 March 2019.

96. For more of Freeman's address, see “Order in Turmoil: Making Sense of Kaleidoscopic Change in the Middle East” at ChasFreeman.net.

97. “Syria: Who Will Win the Future?”, Nikolaos van Dam, Henriëtte van Lynden Lecture, , November 2017.

98. “Bombing Devastates Syrians Trapped near Turkish Border,” Carlotta Gall and Hwaida Said, The New York Times, May 30, 2019.

99. Preventing Violent Extremism Through Promoting Inclusive Development, Tolerance and Respect for Diversity, A Development Response to Addressing Radicalization and Violent Extremism - United Nations Development Programme. 2016, UNDP.org.

100. “Will the Left Go Too Far?” Peter Beinart, The Atlantic, December 2018.

101. Book of Order, F-1.03, F-1.01.

102. See ChristianZionism.org

103. See the PC(USA) document library (http://index.pcusa.org) for General Assembly statements.

104. “The Levant” is a French term which is a vestige of colonialism. It is a relative term referring to “the land where the sun rises” because the sun rises in the east. Lever to rise, in French.

105. Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb is a Palestinian Christian, president of Dar al-Kalima University College and former pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, Palestine.

106. Raheb, Mitri, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes, NY: Orbis Books, 2014, pp. 125-130.

107. President Bush’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001.

108. An Ethic for Enemies, Donald Shriver, Oxford University Press (1998).

109. Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War, Glen Stassen, Pilgrim Press (2008). 110. Foreign Affairs Budget: State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development FY 2020 Budget Request, March 11, 2019.

111. Bridget Johnson, “ISIS Claims Escalating Use of Wildfire Arson as Terror Tactic,” May 28, 2019.

112. Danielle Sered, Orientalism, Postcolonial Studies Blog, Emory University, Fall 1996.

113. “The Middle East’s Great Divide Is Not Sectarianism,” by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, The New Yorker, March 11, 2019.

114. Used by Agha and Malley, ”Islamist” is a nuanced term for an advocate or supporter of militancy or fundamentalism. Because it is often confused with “Islamic,” unless quoting another source, we are not using this term and have replaced it with “extremist” throughout this study guide to differentiate from adherents of orthodox Islam.

115. Azadeh Moaveni says that in many cases Shiites and Sunnis have lived alongside each other peacefully for years. In Bahrain and even in Iraq, before the recent political conflicts, there weren't any major clashes. "It's important to remember that these differences are very much in the last 50 years magnified and instigated," she says. "Very often it comes down to very ruthless, powerful leaders, autocrats, and dictators who see the potential for stoking this kind of difference and use it to their advantage." In these cases, Moaveni says, religious differences become "part of the wider political project that makes use of sect to move itself forward." A key difference between Shiites and Sunnis, she says, is Shiism's approach to interpretation of Islamic text. "[Shia] have a more flexible, adaptive attitude to the practice of some legal principles. For Sunnis, on the other hand, legal tradition has been much more insular and closed off from interpretation. Author of “Lipstick Jihad” and correspondent for Time Magazine.

116. “The Islamic Traditions of Wahhabism and Salafiyya,” Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress RS21654, Christopher M. Blanchard, Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division.

117. “Islam: Sunnis and Shiites,” Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress, RS21745 - a comprehensive discussion of Sunni Islam and the schools of Islamic legal thought.

118. Muslim Brotherhood, Federation of American Scientists - fas.org.

119. “Islamic Religious Schools, Madrasas: Background,” Congressional Research Service, CRS Report RS21654. See also, "Update on the Global Campaign Against Terrorist Financing," Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing, June 15, 2005.

120. Madrasa is the generic word for school in Arabic. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Wahabis established schools just as the Presbyterian missionaries did when they arrived in the region. These Wahabi-funded schools, however, taught children through an extremist religious lens, hence associating the word madrasa with extremism. They could be called "long-term" investments as in many places, they were the only available school option.

121. Definition from christianzionism.org. 122. Joel Migdal, Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East, Columbia University Press, 2014.

123. According to their website: www.aipac.org.

124. Governance & Politics of Lebanon - fanack.com - Media and Analysis of MENA Region.

125. David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, New York, 2011.