Mideast Christians, Muslims Posture on Kosovo Fighting
26 March, 1999
By Patrick Goodenough
CNS Jerusalem Bureau ChiefJerusalem (CNS) – As NATO forces continue to bombard Yugoslavia, ethnic Christian minorities in the Middle East have come out in concerted support of the Serbs, whom they see as victims of expansionist Islam.
Organizations representing ancient Christian communities in Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq – some based in the region, others in exile in the West – have issued statements slamming the West for siding against "Christian Serbia".
The airstrikes are aimed at forcing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a peace plan granting NATO-monitored autonomy to the province of Kosovo, the majority of whose population are ethnic Albanian Muslims.
The Serbs have been fighting an armed uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army, often using brutal methods to quell the rebels' fight for autonomy, and it has long been reported that Iranian, Afghan and other Islamist volunteers have been fighting with the KLA.
Israeli journalist Steve Rodan wrote this week that, according to European security and diplomatic sources, "Kosovo has become the latest and most significant arena for radical Islamic states and groups that seek to widen their influence in Europe."
"Nobody argues that Islamic elements fomented the conflicts in the Balkans. But they say Iran, Saudi Arabia and some of their terrorist beneficiaries have exploited the fighting to establish a sphere of influence that spans from Greece to the Austrian border," wrote Rodan.
The London-based Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, whose goal is the triumph of Islam worldwide, issued a press release Thursday calling for Muslims to join the jihad to "liberate Muslim land" in Kosovo.
Anjem Choudary, secretary-general of the Society of Muslim Lawyers, said "Muslims everywhere are obliged to fight against the Serbs who are fighting against Muslims in the Balkans physically, financially and verbally, until all Muslim land is liberated."
Israeli counter-terrorism expert Ely Karmon said yesterday "Kosovo is important to Islamic terror groups, because they see it as a battlefield between Muslims and Christians."
The conflict was also being exploited for the purposes of recruiting activists, and as part of a campaign to "radicalize Muslim communities in Britain, France et cetera," according to Karmon.
Karmon noted, however, that the KLA had at one point expelled Afghans who had arrived to fight alongside the rebels, because they "didn't want relations with the West to be affected."
Christian minorities in the Middle East said they feel an affinity to the Serbs. Claiming historical repression by Islamic regimes and compatriots, many ethnic Christians in the Middle East regard Muslims with fear and distrust.
The Middle East Christian Committee, representing American Christians of Middle Eastern origin, said it did not understand "the biased policy of our government."
"We certainly criticize the authoritarian regime in Belgrade, and hope to see the conflict in Kosovo solved by diplomatic means. However, we do not understand our decision makers who seem to be only in favor of Muslim rights and always opposed to Christian's rights in that region."
The New York-based Coptic American Union questioned U.S. participation in military strikes in Yugoslavia, while it said the Clinton Administration ignores the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt.
"We are sick and tired of watching our foreign policy being dictated by the Islamist lobby in Washington DC," a union spokesman said in a statement.
"Our community [in Egypt] is being ethnic cleansed by a government which is receiving U.S. foreign aid," he added.
American-Coptic Association representative George Abdelmassih said Egypt's 12 million Copts supported "the Christian Serbian people" morally and politically.
Pierre Chamoun of the Chicago-based Assyrian Network, which represents the Assyrian minority in Iraq and Turkey, said U.S. foreign policy had become slave to Arab – and especially Saudi – interests.
"What they want is the establishment of three Islamist states in the Balkans at the expense of its original native peoples and identities," Chamoun charged.
Similar sentiments were expressed in a statement released by the World Maronite Union, based in Beirut, Lebanon: "We Maronite Catholic[s] feel that the Islamist-inspired attack against Orthodox Serbia is an aggression against all Middle East Christianity."
A spokesman for the South Sudan Movement, Dominic Mohammed, said from New York that the Muslim regime in Khartoum had killed mostly Christian South Sudanese in huge numbers.
"Yet we never saw the U.S. fighter bombers in the skies over Khartoum or southern Sudan. Are white Muslims [in Kosovo] more valuable than Black Christians?" he asked.
The Beirut-based Greek-Orthodox Youth Union of the Middle East, which claims membership in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Jordan, also issued a statement denouncing the invoking of the Holocaust in justifying the need for military action in Kosovo.
Unlike Europe's Jews half a century go, it said, "Kosovo's Muslims are armed, and are backed by another nation in addition to 51 Muslim states, as well as the vast resources of oil.
"Jews lost six million souls, the largest genocide in the history of mankind. Comparing it with the events in Kosovo is historically wrong and immoral," the union said.
In his address to the nation on Wednesday, President Clinton recalled the two World Wars and the Holocaust. "Just imagine if leaders back then had acted wisely and early enough, how many lives could have been saved, how many Americans would not have had to die," he said.
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