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 Middle East, 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 Beirut 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 Iraq, 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. Egypt’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 ,Arabic 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.