By Ruth Sherlock, Kessab
When insurgents stormed Kessab, they posted pictures of
themselves protecting ancient churches. But a visit to the Syrian town tells a
different story. Rain seeped into the tombs through shattered flagstones.
Nearby, marble crosses lay in pieces. Plastic flowers, once lovingly placed on
a grave, were torn and stamped into the earth. Beside the desecrated graveyard
in the Syrian town of Kessab stood the Holy Trinity Armenian Evangelical
church. Its library, pews and altar had all been burned by arsonists.
The perpetrators had shown both purpose and glee in their
destruction of Christian sites in this ancient Armenian town. Statues were
riddled with bullets and Islamist slogans were scrawled across the walls of homes
and shops.
Once a haven from Syria’s civil war, nestled in the hills
of Latakia province, Kessab gained international fame when it was captured by
rebels last spring in a surprise offensive that forced the town’s 2,500
Armenian Christians to flee.
Turkey was widely accused of helping the insurgents to
capture Kessab, despite the participation in the attack of Jabhat al-Nusra, an
affiliate of al-Qaeda.
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But the Syrian armed forces took back the town in June
after it had endured three months of rebel occupation. The Telegraph travelled
to the area on a facility trip with the Syrian regime to witness the aftermath
of the battle.
The desecration of Kessab’s churches contradicts the
claims of Syrian rebels that their fighters are non-sectarian protectors of
Christian residents and heritage.
The evidence also fails to support counter-claims by
pro-government groups that Armenian Christians were “massacred” during the
rebel offensive.
When this assault began last year, Turkey’s then prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was facing a general election and his rebel
allies in Syria were losing ground to regime forces. The offensive on Kessab
was intended to bolster both the insurgents and their Turkish backers.
During weeks of planning before the assault, rebel
fighters were given strict orders to use the offensive to show themselves as
“moderate Muslims” and natural allies of the West.
Kessab is protected by a mountain range, acting as a
natural fortress against invasion, and the Turkish border almost surrounds the
town. It was only when Turkish troops allowed free movement across the frontier
that the rebels were able to storm and capture Kessab.
In the first hours, all appeared to be going according to
plan. Insurgents, including those from the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, posed
for pictures showing them protecting churches and talking gently to local
people.
About 30 Armenians, who had been too elderly or frail to
escape the offensive, were placed on minibuses and driven to Turkey, where they
were given a warm reception that was covered in minute detail by state
television.
Ignoring the participation of Islamist extremists in the
offensive - including a large number of foreign jihadists - Ahmed Jarba, the
head of the Syrian National Coalition, travelled to Kessab and claimed a
victory.
But immediately after the media spotlight fell away,
residents of Kessab told the Telegraph that the desecration began.
“They took photographs to show they were looking after
the churches, and then set them alight,” said Father Miron Avedissian, priest
of the Armenian Apostolic church that was largely destroyed. “It all still
happened in the first day.”
If Western-backed rebels tried to stop the rampage by
their extremist allies, there was little evidence of a struggle.
Doors, walls and shopfronts on the town’s narrow streets
are covered in scrawled messages declaring “There is no God but Allah”.
The white paint is still fresh on the walls of Father
Avedissian’s church as he tries to repair the damage.
Tufts of burned carpet on the staircase, and partly
melted air-conditioning units on the walls, show the intensity of the fire that
wrecked its interior.
The priest flicked through photographs on his iPhone: one
image showed himself inside the church, pointing to a vandalised painting of
Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Outside, the crosses carved into the stone over the
wide arch doors were riddled with bullet holes.
Nearby, the Holy Trinity Armenian Evangelical church was
little more than a burned shell. Walls were blackened by smoke; wooden pews,
tapestries, Bibles and kneeling cushions had all been incinerated in a fire
that appeared to have raged until there was nothing left to burn.
Inside the Holy Trinity Armenian Evangelical after it was
burned during the rebel offensive on Kessab last spring (Ruth Sherlock/The
Telegraph)
Writing, ostensibly by the rebels, covered the church’s
walls. The names of the rebel groups who participated in the attack appeared to
be listed. The graveyard was little more than a field of smashed masonry, its
headstones individually defaced.
The Telegraph cannot independently confirm that all of
the damage was inflicted by the rebels.
Zavinar Sargdegian, a 58-year-old resident, said that she
witnessed the churches being set alight.
“I was at home with my husband when they raided the
house,” she said. “They broke down the front door. They pushed us on to the
street. We were on our knees and they put a gun to our heads. From the road I
saw the Angelic Church burning. Fire was coming out of the doors and windows.”
The rebels included men from Chechnya, Tunisia and Libya,
she said.
Other residents, who said they returned to their homes
when Syrian forces recaptured the town, described finding the churches and the
graveyard destroyed.
Tweets dating from the days after the rebels stormed the
town on 21 March include pictures of jihadists destroying crosses in the
churches.
Soldiers patrolling in Kessab in front of one of the
burned buildings (Ruth Sherlock/The Telegraph)
Others show them setting fire to shops selling alcohol
and smashing glass bottles in the streets.
For the past two years, rebel-held areas of Latakia
province have been the domain of some of the most hardline extremist groups.
Christians have not been their only targets. In 2013,
jihadists swept into several villages in Latakia inhabited by the Alawite
minority. They murdered dozens of civilians and kidnapped hundreds of women and
children, some of whom are still missing. Extremists from the Islamic State of
Iraq and Levant (Isil) are believed to have joined these attacks.
Across Syria, hardline Islamists have gained dominance
over the rebel movement fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Joshua Landis, an expert on the conflict, estimates that
non-Islamist rebels now control less than 5 per cent of Syria, with the rest of
the country divided between the regime, Isil or Jabhat al-Nusra.
Most of Kessab’s people were able to escape before their town
fell to the insurgents. There is no evidence of the “massacre” of civilians
claimed by regime loyalists - at one point supposedly “proved” with images that
were later identified as shots from a horror film.
But the fall of the Armenian town summoned bitter
memories of persecution. In 1909, tens of thousands of Armenians were killed
during the Adana massacre under the Ottoman empire.
Then in 1915, a further 5,000 residents of Kessab were
killed by the Ottomans during what some historians consider the “genocide” of
the Armenian minority.
Today, Kessab is coming back to life, but the lives of
those people who have returned to their homes seem far from secure. Turkish
soldiers can be seen on hilltops near the town, manning the border checkpoints
through which the rebels crossed to carry out the attack.
The occasional explosion of tank shells served as a
reminder that the civil war is still close by.
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