Qaa, Lebanon: Every day around sunset, dozens of residents of this small Lebanese Christian village on the border carry their automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case extremists from neighbouring Syria attack.
“We all know that if they come, they will slit our throats for no reason,” said one villager as he drove through the streets of Qaa, an assault rifle resting next to him.
For months, Lebanese Christians have watched with dread as other Christians flee Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, fearing their turn will come next. Fears multiplied after militants from Syria overran a border town last month, clashing with security forces for days and killing and kidnapping Lebanese soldiers and policemen.
Now, for the first time since the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, Lebanese Christians are rearming and setting up self-defense units to protect themselves, an indication of the growing anxiety over the expanding reach of radical Islamic groups.
Across the Middle East, Christian communities as old as the religion itself feel their very survival is now at stake, threatened by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) rampaging across Iraq and Syria.
In Iraq, thousands of Christians have fled their homes after they were made to choose between leaving, converting to Islam or facing death. For the first time in centuries, Iraq’s Ninevah region and the provincial capital of Mosul have been emptied of Christians. After they left, the militants spray-painted their houses with the letter “N’’ for “Nasrani” - a term, meaning Nazarene, used to refer to Christians - marking the homes as Isil property.
In Syria, thousands of Christians have been displaced during its three-year conflict. Christian towns and villages have come under attack by Islamist militants, most recently the historic central town of Mahradeh. Islamic fighters in Syria rampaged through the ancient Christian town of Maaloula near Damascus earlier this year, destroying historic churches and icons. Christians in the militant stronghold of Raqqa were forced to pay an Islamic tax for protection.
Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria are now sheltering in Lebanon, sensing safety in a pluralistic country which has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East. Lebanon is also the only Arab country with a Christian head of state.
But the fear has spread to Lebanon as well. This week, after a video was posted online showing a group of boys burning an Isil flag in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut, vandals spray-painted the outer walls of several churches in northern Lebanon with the words: “Isil is coming.”
But the rearming of Christians could raise tensions in Lebanon, which is already bitterly split over the Syrian conflict. During Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war, the right-wing Phalange party engaged in heavy fighting on behalf of the country’s once-dominant Christians.
In Syria and Iraq, however, Christians have always been a scattered minority, and rather than mobilise to protect themselves, they enjoyed relative security for decades under the rule of secular dictatorships. Now, as vast swaths of both countries have fallen out of government control, many Christians are looking elsewhere for safety.
In northeastern Syria, small Christian units have been fighting under the umbrella of the People’s Protection Unit, a Kurdish militia. But most Christians in Syria, as well as Iraq, say they simply don’t have the numbers, arms or training to combat the battle-hardened Islamic militants.
Many Syrian Christians, who make up about 10 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million, left for Europe over the past 20 years, with the flight gathering speed since 2011.
Amir, a 41-year-old Christian, came to Lebanon last year from the northeastern Syrian region of Hassakeh, where Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Syriacs and Armenians traditionally lived together in peace. He is now looking for work in Lebanon, staying with his brother in a Christian area north of Beirut, and considering whether to apply for immigration.
“I don’t want to give up on Syria, but I want my children to grow up feeling safe. I want them to grow up in a place where they can proudly make the sign of the cross without fear,” he said, as two of his children played with cousins nearby. He said 25 members of his extended family have left Syria over the past two years.
Umm Milad, a 27-year-old Iraqi housewife, came to Lebanon with her husband and two sons after Isil fighters put the “N’’ sign on their home in Mosul’s Al Arabi neighborhood in July. They were given 24 hours to leave.
“We are scared,” she said while waiting to collect aid at a Chaldean church in Beirut. “We don’t want to go back. We want to go anywhere else. Canada or America.”