Christianity, who take the long view, have sug- gested that these Churches have existed, throughout the entire span of their history, as minority religious communities, living under governments that were often hostile. The middle generation of Iraqi Christians, who had been brought up in the secular Arab nationalist state of the Ba’athists, are now often heard to reflect upon the experience of their grandparents who had fled Turkey in the wake of massacre and violence, and to wonder if the pattern is repeating itself. The Syrian Catholics are part of the Catholic
Church in the Middle East, which has a unique patriarchal ecclesial structure, consisting of six Churches – Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic, Maronite, Melkite and Latin. Given that it is one of the smallest expressions of Christianity in the regions (with an estimated 160,000 faithful, 10 bishops, 85 parishes, 120 priests), the loss of around 50 members and three priests will be a bitter blow. One of the key questions raised at the recent Synod for the Middle East was maintaining ecclesial and liturgical culture in a mainly Latin Western Church for a growing Middle Eastern Christian diaspora across the world. While it is largely concentrated in the Middle East, the Syrian Catholic Church has congre- gations in Australia, Sweden, France, Venezuela, Brazil, Sudan, the United States, Canada and Britain. This geographical spread is a pastoral challenge of great complexity for a Church with small numbers. However, Eastern Catholicism has demonstrated an astonishing resilience in history. St Ephrem the Syrian, who was made a Doctor of the Universal Church by Benedict XV, belongs by tradition, in this context, to Syrian Catholicism. Iraqi Christians have long been considered the “the canaries in the coal mines”, for how they fare will be an indicator for the future of Christianity in the Middle East. Right across the region Christians are pondering, against a rise in anti-Christian violence, how are they going to continue to live in such a highly charged political and religious context. One worrying development from these
events in Baghdad was the connection with Egypt. In recent decades, the Coptic Christians have been confronted with a rise in confes- sional violence. This includes the “kidnapping” of Coptic Christian girls referred to by the Islamists and the culling during the swine- flu scare of entire pig herds owned by Christians. However, the difference between Iraq and
Egypt is scale, for the Coptic Orthodox Church is by far the largest Christian community in the region, numbering more than seven mil- lion members, which surpasses the number of Jews in Israel, and is one in 10 of the total population of Egypt. Egypt is a pivotal state for the entire Arab world, and sectarian-con- fessional conflict there would threaten not only the largest concentration of Christians in the Middle East, but possibly the whole region.
■Anthony O’Mahony is reader in the history of Christianity, Heythrop College, University of London. He is co-editor, with Emma Loosley, of Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East (Routledge).
DAVID BLAIR
‘Terrorists will always gather in areas that diplomats call “ungoverned space”’
A skilled chemist is perhaps the most valuable asset a modern terrorist group can possess. The most alarming fact about the discovery of two bombs packed inside air freight packages this week is that both devices seem to have been impossible for normal security procedures to detect. The explosive in question – known as pentaerythritol tetranitrate or PETN – foils sniffer dogs by having no odour and defeats x-ray machines by appearing identical to any number of innocent materials. It can also be easily concealed: in this case, the bomb-maker secreted his devices inside the ink cartridges of computer printers, while apparently planning to detonate them in mid-air using mobile phones. His two creations duly passed through security at five different international airports, including our own East Midlands, and only an intelligence tip-off averted disaster. The alleged designer of the bombs has been named by the US authorities as Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. This youthful Saudi extremist – he is only 28 – appears to have pulled off the terrorist version of cracking the Enigma code. By working out how to make a bomb capable of passing unnoticed through all airport security systems, Mr Asiri must surely have become one of the world’s most wanted and dangerous men. The expertise he has somehow acquired is crucial to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group based in Yemen held responsible for the air freight bombs. First, a word about this latest
faction to bear the name of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisation. Al-Qaeda’s core leadership around Osama bin Laden is believed to be in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, along the north-west frontier with Afghanistan. But this redoubt has become hostile territory, especially since the Americans began picking off al-Qaeda leaders almost every week with missile attacks launched from unmanned drones. Osama bin Laden is no longer thought to direct attacks or do much beyond dispensing taped messages to his followers. Al-Qaeda is not a centralised, coherent organisation;
bin Laden does not chair an equivalent of the IRA’s army council. Instead, he acts as propagandist, ideologue and figurehead. Meanwhile, other groups thousands of miles from his redoubt in Pakistan adopt al-Qaeda’s name and ideology, but operate entirely independently. As a largely ungoverned country with a weak state, Yemen has been vulnerable to penetration for years. The decisive factor leading to the birth of “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” on Yemeni territory appears to have been the campaign against terrorist cells in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. This succeeded in reducing the threat within the kingdom’s borders, so crucial figures, including Mr Asiri, simply fled over the frontier into Yemen, where they have clearly been able to regroup. This serves as a timely reminder that terrorists will always gather in areas that diplomats call “ungoverned space”. The Saudi state is strong enough to police every inch of its territory; the Yemeni state, by contrast, is so weak that the country’s president is little more than mayor of his capital, Sana’a. Thus Mr Asiri appears to have found a new haven in Yemen to perfect his skills as a master bombmaker. One of his early inventions may have been the device, also made of PETN, that was carried on board a US airliner by a Nigerian student and detonated over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The fact that this failed to bring down the plane, or achieve much beyond singeing the hapless Nigerian, was down to a bad mistake either on the part of Mr Asiri or his youthful courier. My bet is that the Nigerian was the weakest link. Earlier, Mr Asiri had sent his younger brother to Jeddah on a suicide mission to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister. Once again, the bomb made of PETN passed through all security checks – and Mr Asiri’s brother detonated the device, but succeeded only in killing himself. Mr Asiri’s latest effort appears to
have failed only because a Saudi member of al-Qaeda defected to his homeland’s intelligence service and revealed the plan. So far, luck has always been against the young bombmaker, but the law of averages suggests that this cannot continue. The Yemeni, US and British authorities will now be doing their utmost to ensure that he does not have another chance.
■David Blair writes for the Financial Times.
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