Applause from Middle Eastern and American bishops for the head of the White House, after he signed the law that commits the U.S. government to support the minority victims of the jihadists in Iraq and Syria, and hunt down the perpetrators of crimes.
US President Donald Trump once again wears the role of “Defender of Christians”, to the grateful applause of Middle Eastern bishops and influential and wealthy leaders of Western ecclesial circles. He did so on Tuesday, December 11, signing the “Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act (HR390)”, the law that officially commits the U.S. government to providing humanitarian assistance - and not only - to Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East, represented as victims of a “genocide” that would have been perpetrated against them in recent years by jihadist networks in Syria and Iraq.
The photo of the signing ceremony depicts Trump surrounded by a small cheerful group, which includes among others the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson (leader of the Knights of Columbus) and a radiant Bashar Warda, Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil. Trump also received public thanks from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, a U.S. military ordinary and at the same time head of the U.S. Commission of Catholic Bishops for Peace and International Justice. While a few days ago, in an interview on the Iraqi website ankawa.com, Archbishop Warda himself - who in February 2015 had been one of the most explicit clergymen in asking the West for military intervention against Daesh in “defense of Christians” - defined the law being approved as “a point of light at the end of the tunnel”.
The law signed by Trump acknowledges and draws the consequences of the choice - made by US legislators already at the time of the Obama Administration - to apply the definition of “Genocide” to crimes perpetrated against Christians and Yazidi in Iraq and Syria by jihadist extremist groups, such as those affiliated to the so-called Islamic State (Daesh).
The new legislative instrument transforms financial support for humanitarian projects aimed at stabilizing, protecting and defending religious minorities affected by the crimes of the Jihadist militias into an asset of US national policy. The law allows the U.S. State Department to conduct criminal investigations and arrest individuals identified as perpetrators of violence and persecution against religious minorities.
In his comments released after the signing, Trump himself confirmed the commitment of the U.S. apparatus to prosecute and punish those responsible for these crimes. “In this bill,” Kristina Arringa, vice president of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (Uscirf), said “we also recognize the message that those responsible for these crimes, including genocide, will not escape justice.
The law signed by Trump had obtained the unanimous and bipartisan consent of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. On the recommendation of the new legislative act, projects and funding in favor of suffering Middle Eastern religious minorities may also be managed by faith based groups already engaged in supporting Christians and other ethnic-religious communities present in areas of conflict in the Middle East. This choice made by the current US Administration arouses interest and new stimuli in the galaxy of lobbies and networks mobilized in the United States and the North Atlantic West under the banner of defense and protection of Middle Eastern Christians. These subjects will now be able to compete in the collection and management of the resources that the US apparatus makes available to development projects in areas of the world which are followed with interest by the US national security policies.
To focus on the involvement of religious organizations in the management of humanitarian programs financed by the United States was above all Vice President Mike Pence, also in polemic with the structures and apparatus that are part of the UN. Pence had already announced the intention of the US Administration to directly manage financing and aid for Christians in the Middle East - collaborating with religious organizations and without going through the UN bodies - on 25 October 2017, during the annual solidarity dinner for Christians in the Middle East promoted in Washington by the US organization “In Defense of Christians”. “We will no longer rely solely on the United Nations to help persecuted Christians and minorities,” Pence said on that occasion, reporting that federal agencies would in future work “side by side with faith based groups and private organizations to help those who are persecuted for their faith. And this,” Pence added, “because “religiously inspired groups with proven expertise and deep roots in those communities are more than eager to help” while “the United Nations too often ignores their requests for funding”.
The law signed by Trump successfully crowns the lobbying activity carried out under the previous presidential administration by U.S. organizations such as the Knights of Columbus, the “In Defense of Christians” cartel, the Family Research Council, the Commission on Ethics and Religious Freedom of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Centre for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute.
The fundamental premise for Trump’s signing of the law goes back in time, and lies in the plebiscite votes with which the U.S. Parliament had asked the Obama Administration to define as “genocide” the violence perpetrated on Christians in the Middle East by the jihadists of the Islamic Caliphate. According to the U.S. constitutional system, in the face of recognized cases of genocide the U.S. president is required to assess “what action can be taken to ensure that those responsible are brought to trial for such crimes” in a competent court. This provision does not automatically trigger any political and military options. But the possibility of justifying armed interventions in defense of Christians recognized as victims of genocide had continued to hover around the entire campaign of mobilization for the recognition of the so-called “genocide” of Christians in the Middle East. And at the beginning of the campaign for the last presidential elections, the White House candidates accredited as the most vocal supporters of the declaration of “genocide” were Hilary Clinton, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
