The road from Dokan to Sulaymaniyah is pretty good. Even though it’s only two lanes, it’s smooth and in some places pretty straight allowing for making good time across the Kurdish territory in Iraq, at least until getting into the switchbacks of the mountains. That part of Northeastern Iraq has seen both prosperity and terrible conflict since the time of Noah. If you keep working your way to the Southeast from Sulaymaniyah, eventually you will arrive at Halabja, a small town made famous because Saddam attacked his own people with chemical weapons. Though that is the most infamous instance, there are more than forty villages that suffered chemical attacks from Saddam.
As we drove along, knowing the history, I thought back to the anti-chemical warfare training I’d had in the Air Force. Chemical warfare protection is absolutely terrible. The suits are unimaginably uncomfortable, justified only by the grim awareness of the horror that awaits anyone who is even the least bit lax in taking precautions of protections. In addition to normal flight suits and boots, there are plastic bags that are slipped over the body, arms, and legs. Then, with yards of sticky masking tape, any joints of the plastic are secured together to perform an air tight seal. After donning a protective gas mask, more plastic is put overhead and down the arms and rubberized gloved hands, all to be taped in place. The only part of the package that sticks out into ambient air is the filter cover that lets cleansed air into the mask.
Another layer goes over the boots and feet. Then, when completely bundled like a toddler in a snow suit, you do an astronaut shuffle to the aircraft and get strapped in. Unable to turn your head, it is necessary to swivel your whole torso to look to the side. Fat, double gloved fingers struggle to position aircraft switches while the aircraft environmental systems are turned full cold to “Arctic” and checklists are run. It is only the knowledge of what would happen with a lapse that makes the process bearable, and then only barely so.
To insure that the process is taken seriously, there are regular practice sessions with pungent clouds of tear gas, sometimes a nauseating kind that causes victims to throw up. This is most unpleasant training.
One of the villages we entered was really more of a crossroads with some kind of a name only known by local Kurds. Here, even though it had been years since Saddam had released chemical hell on the people, there were still many undeniable signs that he had done it. Irrepressible children still played and swarmed, but many of them had disfiguring scars where the caustic chemicals had burned their skin. One mother told me that it was not just the chemical attack. Her son had had both of his legs blown off by an artillery shell that hit in front of their house where he had been playing. With tears in her eyes she told me that she couldn’t do anything but hold him and try to comfort him while he died.
Those scenes are just as fresh today in my mind as if they happened yesterday-dredged up because of what is happening in Syria. Bashar al-Assad has been the despotic strongman in Syria since 2000, when he succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad who had been in power since 1971. Originally, the family came from the coastal mountains in Northwestern Syria. Assad, whose name means “lion” in Arabic, has not been lion-like at all. Instead, he has functioned more like a protection racket neighborhood thug, draining resources from the people while he himself has lived in luxury. The depths of his evil are on display now as he is using chemical weapons to wield death indiscriminately. He is a ruthless dictator.
Life, however, can be very complicated. Of course he is evil, but even evil people can rarely be uniformly evil in every respect. Under his rule, the Christian Church in Syria had been able to function, in some areas even prosper. Now in the midst of the civil war, many of the combatants are Islamic radicals, some even linked with al Qaeda. In the chaos of the civil war, when people were occupied with the fighting, many Islamic radicals have turned violently not only against Assad, but also against Christians and their churches. This poses a dilemma. When Assad is removed, what will replace him?
Westerners like to assume that given the opportunity to have a choice, people will automatically embrace democracy. As The Arab Spring was starting, I pointed out that the leadership that follows evil leadership is not necessarily righteous. We have seen the rise of many who are sympathetic to groups that are lawless, in some cases even closely linked with them. The other problem is that there has been a pipeline of support from the Assad regime to some activities of terrorist groups in the region. It appears that Assad has thought that he could control them enough to get them to serve his international agenda.
From an ethical standpoint, we are constrained not only to address the evil perpetrated by Assad, but also strive to minimize, or even interdict, negative consequences that would rise from that which would replace him. Sadly, it is a very common mistake to assume that other people think the same way that we do and that they will act like we do.
That same dynamic has been at work in the Anglican Communion for decades. Liberal “progressives” have thought that everyone actually thinks like they do. Its just a matter of telling the story so that people can see the situation “rightly.” The problem with that is that a liberal world view generally focuses on short term situations and often-perhaps even usually-ignores the consequences downstream. That is writ large in the area of same-sex behavior where “happiness” today is pursued despite the fact that same-sex behaviors have devastating health consequences. Jeffrey Satinover in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth cites those behaviors as shortening life span by almost three decades. Unintended consequences for sure. Unintended and ignored.
Current Communion emphasis to pursue Indaba conversations moves the liberal agenda forward, ignoring (and even denying) the decline that is introduced.
Genuinely effective actions need to be globally aware and systemically applied. That is true in the Anglican Communion and in regions of the world as well. In the Communion, a broad coalition of Biblically faithful is changing the conversation and captivating the missional imagination of a growing number of Provinces. The growing breadth of the coalition will be staggering to see in Nairobi when the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) meets again this October. That is especially notable when one observes the nearly universal decline observable in the liberal leaning provinces. Were it not for being able to raid the funds that orthodox believers gave in the Episcopal Church, the current TEC administration would not be able to function at all. When other people’s money runs out, the trains will grind to a halt quickly and more and more terrible consequences will appear.
GAFCON provides a long term solution to both the challenges of the world and the ills of the Anglican Communion. It is not an attempt to stage a symbolic demonstration against liberal spiritual failures. It is a movement to release life.
Although it is challenging to imagine, a solution to address the horrific situation in Syria’s use of chemical weapons cannot just be a surgical military strike. That would just multiply chaos in the country. Eliminating the command and control structures from the Syrian military may sound attractive, but as that weakens Assad it also adds to the uncertainties of what will emerge after him.
Responsible nations need to recover and re-articulate the moral and even spiritual principles that guided international cooperation for generations. In some cases that means that we must redouble our efforts to improve people’s lives. In other cases, it means that we need to be able to show tremendous and righteous strength. The Middle East needs the moral compass and energy of a GAFCON if it is ever going to be able to actually deal with the conflicts there.
Superficial or symbolic gestures are not enough for the Middle East just as they have not been adequate in the Anglican Communion. For the church, the good news is that GAFCON 2013 is coming. What is coming to Syria?
