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LEFT: Photo by George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images
ashar Hawale, an Orthodox Christian and private cab driver in Aleppo, Syria, was kidnapped in 2015 by jihadi terrorists and held hostage for 25 days until his family could pay a $4,000 ransom. “Thanks be to God, my father was released, mainly unharmed,” said Adeeb, Bashar’s 24-year-old son. “But they kept his car, and since it was his own taxi, my father lost his means of making a living.” When a bomb had blown out the Mazda station wagon’s windows two years earlier, the family — Bashar, his wife, Silva, and their three children — had funds to repair it. After the kidnapping, they couldn’t replace the car and concentrated only on survival. In December 2016, the Syrian Army ousted the last pocket of organized Islamist insurgents from Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and its industrial center. Last year, the Hawales restored their damaged apartment with crucial help from the “Build to Stay” initiative, sponsored by the Melkite Catholic Archdiocese of Aleppo in partnership with the Knights of Columbus. Established in 2015 by Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, the program has provided Catholic and other Christian families with aid to repair homes and businesses, training in construction trades, and other humanitarian assistance so that they can remain in the city and rebuild their livelihoods. SURVIVORS OF WAR Life for the Hawales was precarious from 2012 through 2016 — as it was for thousands of Christians in Aleppo. What began as local demonstrations for more democratic rights in many countries during the “Arab Spring” in 2010 and 2011 rapidly mutated in Syria into confusing military standoffs between rival militias, often financed from abroad, and the Syrian Army, defending President Bashar al-Assad. A siege began in 2012 when an array of Islamist militias, supported by foreign jihadi fighters, occupied eastern Aleppo with the goal of taking over the city. The Syrian government maintained control of western Aleppo, where most Christians live, but it was surrounded and largely cut off from the rest of the country. Meanwhile, the notorious Islamic State (ISIS) surged across much of eastern Syria in 2013, taking as its “capital” the city of Raqqa, just over 100 miles east of Aleppo. In October 2017, U.S.-backed coalition forces recaptured Raqqa, and the civil war effectively ended a month later. Before the war, some 175,000 Catholic or Orthodox Christians lived in Aleppo, about 12 percent of the city’s population. Four years later, only 75,000 Christians remained. More than half the nation’s pre-war population of 22 million people was forced to flee — including some 6 million internally displaced persons and 5 million more living as refugees in neighboring countries. In 2015, when many advocates were lobbying Western governments to accept more Christian refugees from Syria and Iraq, a lone voice from Syria, that of Aleppo-born Archbishop Jeanbart, gently asked allies for a different form of support:
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Raqqa
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Above: A map of Syria shows the capital city of Damascus; Aleppo, once the country’s largest city; and Raqqa, which the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied as its “capital” until the city was recaptured in late 2017. • Opposite page: Damaged buildings in the Jdeideh district, one of Aleppo’s Christian neighborhoods, are pictured Dec. 9, 2016, during the battle for the city between Islamic militants and government forces.
to help Christians stay in the ancient lands where the first seeds of the faith were sown after Pentecost. “We could not remain indifferent to what was happening to us and let destiny just happen,” the 74-year-old archbishop affirmed. “We had to rise at all costs to confront this mortal adversity, invest ourselves fully, and act with all our might to safeguard our missionary presence, providentially protected by the Lord for centuries on this earth sanctified by the blood of the first disciples of Christ.” ‘A BETTER FUTURE’ While visiting the United States in 2014 to educate audiences on the Syrian conflict and the needs of local Christians, Archbishop Jeanbart reconnected with Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson. The two had met in Rome a decade earlier, and Archbishop Jeanbart was touched by Anderson’s concern regarding the practical life of the Church in Aleppo. “He kindly asked me how we were able to ensure the functioning of the archdiocese in times of war when we had no resources left,” the archbishop recalled. “It was then that a new page in our history began, marked by the generous support of the Knights of Columbus.” A partnership was then created with the Supreme Council to advance Build to Stay, which was designed to give people practical assistance and hope. “Making speeches and appeals to our faithful to remain and FEBRUARY 2018
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