China's Great Leap Backwards: implications of the CCP's 20th National Congress

By Elizabeth Kendal

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – wherein the CCP’s top leaders for the next five years will be appointed – will commence on Sunday 16 October. 

The Congress comes as the CCP is in the grip of a ‘civil war’ between Xi Jinping’s ‘ultra-Maoist’ faction and the CCP’s two original factions: the Shanghai Faction led by Jiang Zemin (president 1993-2003), and the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) led by Hu Jintao (president 2003-2013).  

The 20th Congress will essentially mark the start of a new phase of that ‘civil war’ as Xi Jinping (president since 2013) is appointed to a status-quo-busting, Deng-era-ending third term as President.

As the International Strategic Studies Association’s Defense and Foreign Affairs (D&FA) Strategic Policy magazine notes (8,2022): ‘It cannot be stressed enough how precarious and important this current “civil war” for dominance of the CPC is to both Xi Jinping and the Chinese population, and to the long-term strategic posture of mainland China…’

BACKGROUND

After the death of Chairman Mao Zedong – a mercy which brought the horrendous Cultural Revolution to an end – paramount leader Deng Xiaoping moved decisively to secure the position of the CCP.

Just as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had done in 1956 when he blamed all the Soviet Union’s failings, excesses, and horrors on the late Joseph Stalin (died 1953), Deng blamed the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and all the CCP’s failings, excesses, and horrors on the late Chairman Mao (died 1976). Consequently, in China as in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party literally got away with mass murder.

To prevent the rise of a new personality cult, Deng introduce presidential term limits – limiting Presidents to two five-year terms. He also introduced collective leadership – ensuring power was shared and rotated between the CCP’s two factions: the Shanghai Faction/Gang (which represents China’s wealthy coastal cities) and the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL, which represents China’s poor rural hinterland).

Deng insisted that the CCP should get its legitimacy not from ideology but from its ability to deliver prosperity. Famously declaring, ‘To get rich is glorious!’ Deng put China on path to openness and free market reform in pursuit of development and prosperity.

However, just as occurred in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, openness and restructuring generated neither approval nor gratitude. To the contrary, openness and reform enabled awareness, which generated anger, facilitated demands, and culminated in protests.  

After the Tiananmen Square protests and 4 June 1989 military crackdown, the CCP realised it needed a new narrative. A new school curriculum was written in which Marxist ideology was replaced with Chinese nationalism. According to the new narrative, China was long the greatest nation on earth. However, from 1839, China endured 100 years of national humiliation at the hands of hostile foreign powers. Since taking power in 1949, the CCP has been leading China on a 100-year marathon to national rejuvenation which will see China regain global supremacy by 2049.

The generation raised on this narrative (i.e. virtually all mainland Chinese under the age of 30) tends to view the CCP as China’s saviour and defender, much to the horror of the older generation, particularly those aged over 70yrs who lived through the terrors of the CCP’s Cultural Revolution.

Originally a member of Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai Faction, Xi Jinping has diverged from Jiang in assessing that China’s growth is unsustainable. The country is running out of foreign exchange reserves and crises loom over food and water. Consequently, the CCP will not always be able to deliver prosperity.

As Xi sees it, if the CCP is to complete the 100-year marathon to national rejuvenation and global supremacy then the CCP will need to sacrifice growth and return to Mao-style total control of both the economy and the masses.

The main obstacle on Xi’s path has been the commitment of CCP elites – specifically those of the Shanghai Faction – to continue to promote pursuit of prosperity. As geopolitical-economic analyst David Goldman [author of, ‘You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World’ (July 2020)] notes in a September 2022 address: ‘China is Marxist the same way the Mafia is Catholic’.  This is not about ideology. To the contrary, it is all about retaining power and wealth, and what should be the means to that end. 

THE ERA OF XI JINPING

After becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping moved quickly to establish his own faction and shore up his own power. In March 2018, the CCP’s purged, submissive legislature approved an amendment to the constitution, removing presidential term limits, paving the way for Xi Jinping to be re-appointed for a third (and fourth and possibly fifth) five-year term. Xi (69) has already surpassed the recommended (but not mandated) retirement age for CCP leadership, that being 68 years.  

Xi has secured enormous power, firstly by way of political purges executed under the cover of ‘anti-corruption’, and secondly through escalating levels of social control. Xi’s extraordinary measures of social control range from the establishment of a People’s Armed Police (PAP) force tasked with ‘stability maintenance’; lawfare under the cover of new ‘Administrative Measures’ and repressive legislation; the use of blanket surveillance using camera loaded with world-leading facial recognition software and Artificial Intelligence to drive the CCP’s punitive Social Credit System; to extraordinarily cruel Zero-COVID measures through which the CCP has demonstrated it can turn an apartment block or even a city into a lethal prison literally overnight.

Zero-COVID

In April 2022, Defense and Foreign Affairs (D&FA) Strategic Policy magazine (4,2022) assessed that the lockdowns are designed to ‘bring the locals to heel, ending the expectation of free movement and economic prosperity, ensuring that the Xi faction would not be challenged’. The authors noted that ‘tens of thousands’ had already died from ‘deliberately induced widespread starvation in Xi’an, Shanghai and elsewhere in mainland China.’  

According to the D&FA report, ‘Three weeks into the Shanghai lockdown, which began in late March 2022, the Party under Xi, had begun replacing or supplementing the omnipresent police and white-clad COVID medical enforcers with elements of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) brought in from outside Shanghai. PLA Air Force Xi’an Y-20 heavy transports airlifted the troops into Shanghai in a mass operation during the second week of April 2022.’  

This pattern continues to be replicated across the country. At the detection of just a few COVID cases, whole cities are forced into snap lockdowns – not for days but for weeks – with little to no food, water, medicines, or assistance. Apartment blocks are sealed, barricaded and fenced in overnight. Those not home when a COVID case is detected are rounded up by ‘Dabai’ (meaning ‘Big White’ on account of their white hazmat suits) – and herded off to quarantine facilities / concentration camps. By day, people succumb to starvation, lack of medical care, and suicide. Anything but silent, the nights are marked by eerie wailing as despair and desperation take hold. [See China Insights, ‘New wave of strict lockdowns across China’, 16 Sept 2022.]

Using Zero-COVID measures, Xi has managed to rein in the private sector, stifle unsustainable growth, punish the Shanghai Faction, and return the masses to a state of fearful submission and dependency. In an article entitled, ‘China’s Growth Sacrifice’ (23 Aug 2022) Stephen S. Roach expresses concern that the process ‘has only just begun’.

Some analysts believe Xi might relax the Zero-COVID measures after the Congress, once his position is secure. Others are not so sure; indeed, some believe Xi should never feel secure again! Whatever the case, the CCP has acquired the ability to control the masses to levels unimaginable just a few years ago.

Persecution will escalate

This nightmarish environment forms the context of the escalating persecution of the Church in China. In pursuing its goal of a global supremacy, the CCP demands and requires a ‘united front’. Dissenting voices will be silenced. The persecution ahead will be just as severe as that in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) – albeit more high-tech. CCP policy is less about ideology and more about a determination to keep the CCP in power, no matter the human cost.

The human cost

It is increasingly clear that the atheistic CCP has no regard for human life. And why should it? The atheist does not believe that human beings are created by God in the image of God; or that life is a gift from God; or that they will have to give an account to God. To the atheistic CCP, Chinese citizens are expendable cogs in the CCP’s machine. For the Chinese, the human cost of that ideology is increasingly becoming clear.

‘LYING FLAT’: In March-April 2021 a new trend emerged among Chinese youths: that of tang ping or ‘lying flat’ [see: China Insights, 9 June 2021]. The chatter around lying flat became so ubiquitous on social media that by October 2021, President Xi felt obliged to condemn it. ‘Lying flat’ does not mean stopping work, because most youths simply cannot afford to stop work. ‘Lying flat’ is a negative mindset or a viral sentiment wherein youths are opting to stop striving and instead do only that which is essential for survival. They have pursued Xi’s ‘Chinese dream’, working ‘996’ (from 9am to 9pm, six days a week), only to find themselves unable to afford a home or maintain relationships or enjoy recreation. By 2021 these disillusioned youths were increasingly struggling to afford food amidst record inflation soaring youth unemployment [19.9 percent].

‘LET IT ROT’: By March 2022, a new trend had emerged and tang ping or ‘lying flat’ was overtaken by bai lan or ‘let it rot’. [See: China Insights, 7 June 2022.] ‘Let it rot’ is ‘an evolution of 2021’s “lying flat” trend, but with more nihilist overtones.’ No longing opting to do the bear minimum, Chinese youths are ‘voluntarily giving up the pursuit of life goals because they realise that they are simply unattainable’. As Mara Leighton explains, ‘Bailan refers to when a losing team stops trying to win in order to more rapidly bring a game to its end’ [Insider, 6 Oct 2022]. To ‘let it rot’ is to accept that the situation is hopeless, and that the future is both ‘unchangeable and unsatisfactory’. If ‘lying flat’ is a statement of frustration and disillusionment, then ‘let it rot’ is a lament of hopelessness and despair.

‘RUNOLOGY’: The latest term or sentiment to go viral in China is runxue or runology [see: China Insights, 24 July 2022]. Made from the English word ‘run’ and the Chinese word xue or study, it refers to the study of running away. The term went viral in April 2022, at the beginning of the punishing Shanghai lockdown. As China’s largest city and financial hub, Shanghai’s diverse population includes many highly educated and entrepreneurial Chinese who have gained advance degrees and experience overseas, along with many foreigners. As news leaked out of locked-down/incarcerated residents starving to death, or dying for want of basic medical care and medicines, or being driven to suicide; or of Dabai (‘Big White’) zero-COVID policy enforcers abusing traumatised residents, assaulting the elderly, sealing apartments, and beating pets to death, it grabbed the world’s attention (at least for a moment). As the Xi-led CCP works to crush the private sector and redistribute wealth by force, many wealthy Chinese – everything from greedy crooks and corrupt elites to highly educated successful and entrepreneurial Christians – are desperately seeking a way of escape. Meanwhile the government is desperately implementing measures to keep them, and their money, trapped in the country. China is fast becoming a prison.  

CHRIST THE REDEEMER

By 1953, the Mao-led CCP had expelled all foreign missionaries. By the late 1960s it had sent most of China’s Christian leaders to forced labour in coal mines and prison labour camps. Yet in the absence of foreigners and pastors, Christ the Redeemer raised up an army of unassuming evangelists – mostly mature Chinese women – who spread the Gospel throughout China’s rural heartlands. Over the decades, Chinese Christianity grew phenomenally; it remained, however, an overwhelmingly rural phenomenon. In the wake of the horror of the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, multitudes of China’s educated urban elites started to question their ideology. Amidst the grief, Christ the Redeemer opened the door to spread his saving Gospel through China’s burgeoning cities.

Of all the countries where Christians are persecuted, China is unique precisely because God has worked all things together so that Christians exist everywhere (geographically) and at every level of society. Clearly, God is preparing the Chinese Church for a time yet to come.

The day is surely coming when the LORD will judge the CCP: he will ‘cut it down’ and ‘cast it out’ (Ezekiel 31). But that will only happen in God’s perfect time, according to God’s perfect plan, when everything is in
place. When that day comes, the Chinese Church will be free to change the world.

Meanwhile, as China's Church perseveres through faith-testing times, we must uphold China’s Church in prayer. Though Satan will fight to the bitter end, his fight will be in vain – especially as we pray! May Christ the Redeemer yet again work all things together in fulfilment of the Father's good and perfect plan (Romans 8:28).

Christians in China
Asia Harvest 2020
(includes a table of stats for each province)

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Recommended freely available resources:

YouTube: China Insights  (this is but one of several excellent YouTube channels providing analysis on China. Others include China Uncensored, with Chris Chappell; and Spotlight on China).

Analysis: ‘The Rise of the Xi Gang: Factional Politics in the Chinese Communist Party,’ by Srijan Shukla. Observer Research Foundation, Occasional Papers, 12 Feb 2021.

For a chronology of the repressive measures introduced since Xi Jinping came to power see: www.ElizabethKendal.com / Global Persecution / North East Asia / China

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com.

Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

For more information visit: www.ElizabethKendal.com 

Nigeria: Terrorism Strikes the South-West

Owo church massacre might herald something worse on horizon
by Elizabeth Kendal

OWO CHURCH MASSACRE
terrorism strikes the South-West

At around 11:30am on Pentecost Sunday 5 June, Fulani Muslim militants from the North attacked worshippers at St Francis Catholic Church in Owo, in the north of Ondo State, in Nigeria’s mostly Christian ethnic Yoruba South-West. 

They struck as the worship service was ending, detonating Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and shooting worshippers as they fled.

According to reports, some of the terrorists were already inside, disguised as worshippers, while others wore military camouflage and were armed with automatic rifles. The shooting continued for about 20 minutes, and though it ‘could be heard from the nearby Methodist Church ... police officers stationed close to the area failed to respond’ (CSW, 6 June).

The highly organised attack left 22 worshippers dead and 56 wounded requiring hospitalisation, many in a critical condition (revised toll as of 7 June). 

Rushing home from a gathering of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja, Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu wept as he visited the massacre site and again as he visited the survivors in hospital.

A “devoted Christian” and Yoruba man, Governor Akeredolu (65) is the son of the late Reverend Jeremiah Olatusi Akeredolu, a convert from Yoruba traditional religion who rose to become the first Anglican Bishop of Akoko in Ondo State.

Critically, Governor Akeredolu has been a leading advocate for restructuring, the need for state police, the anti-open grazing law (limiting the infiltration of Fulani herdsmen), and power rotation (i.e. the unwritten rule that the presidency should rotate between mostly Muslim North and mostly Christian South). Consequently, it might prove significant that the terrorists struck Owo, Governor Akeredolu’s hometown.

Indeed, many view the Owo church massacre as a declaration of war against the Yoruba in general and against Governor Akeredolu in particular.

POSSIBLE MOTIVE
Nigeria is in election mode

With Nigeria’s next general elections slated for 25 February (federal) and 11 March (state) 2023, Nigeria is in election mode.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held its indirect presidential primary on 28 May 2022 and nominated former Vice President Atiku Abubakar – its 2019 nominee [see RLPB 488 (6 Feb 2019)] – as its presidential candidate for 2023. Atiku is a Northern Muslim from Adamawa State, whose Islam leans towards the liberal/nominal; he is more interested in the reviving the economy and in revitalising the private sector than he is in advancing Islam.

Meanwhile, the ruling APC is yet to announce its candidate. Having been elected to the office of president twice, President Muhammadu Buhari is ineligible for re-election. What’s more, because President Buhari is a Fulani Muslim from the North, many in the party believe the APC should endorse a candidate from the South. Leading the drive for a southern candidate is the Chairman of the South-West Governors’ Forum, Ondo Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.

On 4 June (the day before the Owo church massacre), eleven northern APC governors declared their support for a southern presidential candidate and recommended to President Buhari that they limit the search to their southern counterparts. Governor Akeredolu tweeted of his ‘utmost joy’.

Then, on 6 June (the day after the massacre), at the meeting of the National Working Committee in Abuja, the APC National Chairman Sen. Abdullahi Adamu, announced Senate President, Ahmed Lawan – a Northern Muslim, from Yobe – as the APC’s consensus presidential candidate.   

Governor Akeredolu questioned whether the announcement was a joke, suggesting Lawan had simply “made public his preferred choice” ahead of APC’s presidential primaries to be held in Abuja from Monday 6 to Wednesday 8 June. The main southern contender is a Christian Yoruba man, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, a graduate of the London School of Economics.

The problem is this: in line with global trends, multitudes of Nigerian Muslims have radicalised, leaving more Muslims unwilling to vote for a non-Muslim on account of the Quranic command: “O believers! Do not take disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Would you like to give Allah solid proof against yourselves?” (Sura 4:144). Consequently, it is increasingly the case that most Northern Muslims will not be willing – or able (due to threat) – to vote for a non-Muslim.

RESPONSIBILITY
a mysterious silence
 
It is very interesting and indeed quite unusual that no-one has (as yet) claimed responsibility for the Owo terror attack.

Boko Haram (JAS), Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and militant Fulani herdsmen (terrorist proxies) have all been active in neighbouring Kogi State, a strategic central state and transport hub linking the political capital, Abuja (in the centre), to the commercial capital, Lagos (on the South-West coast). [See RLPB 618, Jihad Expands in Niger and Kogi, 6 Oct 2021.]

More recently, ISWAP has claimed responsibility for several terror attacks in Kogi. On 24 April, ISWAP claimed responsibility for an attack on a police station in Adavi LGA. ISWAP also claimed responsibility for the 11 May bombing of a beer parlour/bar in Kabba town which killed three and wounded 16; and another bar bombing on 29 May, also in Kabba, which left 12 people seriously injured. Sahara Reporters notes (31 May): “Kabba is the headquarters of the Kabba/Bunnu Local Government Area and the people speak a dialect of Yoruba called Owe.” 

ISWAP also claimed responsibility for the bombing on Thursday 2 June of an annual festival in Okene (38 km southeast of Kabba) which killed two and wounded 12.

Like Kabba, Okene is primarily populated by ethnic Yoruba. Both towns are just 100km north-east of Owo. Yet ISWAP, which is believed to have cells all through the south, has not claimed responsibility. 

Nigeria's South-West, showing Owo in Ondo State,
and Kabba and Okene in Kogi State.

Could it be that a coalition of jihadists/terrorists, ethnic Fulani expansionists, and corrupt Muslim officials at the highest levels of the military and the government might be working together – each maintaining deniability – to terrorise the Yoruba ahead of a campaign to retain and advance Northern-Fulani-Islamist control of Nigeria?

If so, then civil war is on the horizon!

SECURITY
a constitutional crisis

Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution was prepared by the military regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar (a Hausa Muslim from the North) and decreed into being, just ahead of Nigeria’s return to democracy. Not only did the 1999 constitution abolish local police and centralise Nigeria’s police force, it also expressly bans the establishment of any other police force [see RLPB 596 (5 May 2021)].

The Owo terror attack has reignited calls for a total restructuring of Nigeria’s security apparatus.

In a powerful opinion piece (published 5 June) entitled, Nigeria Needs True Security Federalism, Anthony Chuka Konwea, Ph.D., P.E. explains:
 
“It is technically impossible to adequately secure a huge nation of 200 million people like Nigeria, from one single central location, modern communications notwithstanding.

“To secure Nigeria, you need field security commanders at the local level, knowledgeable of the peculiarities of the local terrain, and fully empowered to take proactive or preemptive security control measures, as they deem fit,without reference to the center or anywhere else besides the State Government.

“Imagine the chaos at the security command and control center in Abuja. It is daily inundated with situation reports (sit-reps) coming in from 36 State Commissioners of Police, each awaiting further instructions and directives on how best to respond to evolving security threats in their respective jurisdictions.

“Just picture the ensuing chaos and confusion.

“Even with a patriotic, well-meaning Central Command, there is bound to be information overload from so many incoming sitreps, each requiring separate threat analysis, and communication of tactical instructions to the respective field commanders.

“When a Fulani expansionist is the Commander-in-Chief as is the situation currently, and you factor in their obsession with evaluating whether each security threat enhances or detracts from their overall strategic objective of overrunning Nigeria, what you get is the present security chaos.”

See also:
Military Rule and Damage to the Spirit of the Nigerian Constitution
Peter Ekeh, Lagos Lecture, 1 December 2010

Presidential Control of the Nigeria Police: Constitutional Reforms for Organizational Performance Development and Political Neutrality
by Chineze Sophia Ibekwe, LL.B, LL.M, PhD (Labour Law), and Onyeka Nosike Aduma, LL.B, LL.M (Law).
Global Journal of Politics and Law Research
Vol.8, No.2, pp.65-79, March 2020

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology and has formerly served with the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission and Christian Faith and Freedom (Canberra).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com

Afghanistan: Islam, the Taliban and the Underground Church

By Elizabeth Kendal

On Sunday 15 August 2021, thousands of heavily armed Taliban fighters swept into Kabul and fanned out across the capital. As in provincial capitals around the country, the Afghan Army simply collapsed. Unwilling to fight, Afghan government troops surrendered Bagram airbase to the Taliban, complete with some 700 trucks, more than 300 Humvees, and dozens of armoured vehicles, artillery systems and a maximum-security prison. Roughly 5,000 prisoners were released, of whom at least 2,300 were known battle hardened militants affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)), al-Qaeda, and Islamic State. 

A few days later, Global Catalytic Ministries – an organisation which supports underground churches in Islamic countries – released grainy footage from a young, clearly distraught, Afghan Christian. “All of our work over the past 20 years has been lost overnight,” he cries. “[We feel like the] whole world has abandoned us.” [See RLPB 612 (25 Aug 2021).]

LONG AN UNGERGROUND CHURCH

Because the Afghan Church has long been an imperilled, underground Church, the exact number of believers is unknown. After the fall of Kabul, one Afghan Church leader estimated the Christian population at 10,000 to 12,000; while another put the figure at 5,000 to 8,000. Both feared the Taliban would eventually move to “eliminate the Christian population”. 

In May 2021, just prior to the Taliban takeover, a foreign worker inside Afghanistan told World News Group correspondent Mindy Belz: “There are basically three types of believers: those who have been forced to leave the country, those who survive by exercising their faith underground, and those who are dead.”

Belz explains: “The shrouded group of believers – who meet in homes and small, trusted fellowship circles – exists entirely underground.” Yet, as she notes, Muslims continue to come to faith across the country. “Internet access coming even to remote parts of the country has brought online evangelism and private discipleship. Some Afghan church leaders became Christians while living as refugees abroad and they teach online or have returned to disciple others.” However, “Conversion from Islam continues to carry a high cost in the Afghan honour-and-shame culture. It often means loss of family, inheritance, and a job.”

“For these reasons,” writes Belz, “fellowship among believers can be rare, often taking place in online chat rooms accessed through VPNs [Virtual Private Networks], a secure connection to the internet that makes the user hard to trace. When believers do gather, they do so in small groups over lunch at an office or behind curtains in a safe house in an otherwise nondescript neighbourhood of dusty streets. Bibles are usually contraband, so Scripture is shared using the internet or with cell phone SIM cards. For all the risks, bold church leaders evangelise Muslims and baptise new believers.” 

CHRISTIAN WITNESS NOT ALLOWED

Baptisms must be performed in secret. The last time Afghans were caught participating in baptism was May 2010. On that occasion a privately-run Afghan television station, Noorin TV, broadcast footage showing Afghans being baptised and worshipping with foreign Christians in alleged “missionary safe houses” in western Kabul. 

The footage triggered a tsunami of Islamic rage in Kabul. Protestors hit the streets, demanding the expulsion of foreigners who try to convert Muslims. To appease the Muslim masses President Karzai appointed a commission to investigate all non-government organisations (NGOs) suspected of promoting Christianity. He also instructed his interior minister and the head of country’s spy agency “to take immediate and serious action to prevent this phenomenon”. In parliament, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a deputy of the lower house, called for Muslim converts to Christianity to be executed. Qazi Nazir Ahmad, a lawmaker from the western province of Herat, affirmed that killing an apostate is “not a crime”. Twenty-five Christians were immediately arrested; over 100 Afghan converts fled to India. 

The situation for Afghan converts had been deteriorating since 2005, a consequence of the Taliban revival. Over the border, in Pakistan, US-ally President Pervez Musharraf had brokered a series of land-for-peace deals with the Taliban-al-Qaeda-tribal alliance. In February 2005 he ceded South Waziristan, and on 5 September 2006 he ceded North Waziristan, providing the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance with an autonomous mini-state – “The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan” – within Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area, along the porous border with Afghanistan.

The Waziristan Accord provided Taliban and al-Qaeda militants with a safe-haven, a sanctuary from where they could consolidate, strategise, recruit, train, deploy, enforce their writ, and expand their sphere of influence. Six months later, in February 2007, the Washington based Center for Security Policy reported that Taliban-al-Qaeda cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan had increased by 300 percent. 

Not only were terror attacks on the rise, but an apostasy trial had lit a fuse that was threatening to blow the Karzai government out of office. 

APOSTASY NOT ALLOWED

Arrested in February 2006, Abdul Rahman was the first Afghan convert to be put on trial in Kabul for apostasy (the capital crime of leaving Islam). 

Afghanistan’s new US-backed Constitution – signed into law in January 2004 – states: “Followers of other religions [i.e. non-Muslims] are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law” (Article Two); and, “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam” (Article Three). In other words, nothing had changed! Afghan Muslims still had zero religious liberty.

Within months of the new US-backed Constitution being signed into law, five Afghan converts were summary executed. Concerning one execution, Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters newsgroup, “A group of Taliban dragged out Mullah Assad Ullah and slit his throat with a knife because he was propagating Christianity.”

Vigilant killings aside, the trial of Abdul Rahman was the first real test of the Karzai government. Having failed to understand the Afghan Constitution, Western governments demanded religious freedom be respected. Meanwhile, Afghan Muslims demanded Islamic Sharia Law be upheld. Karzai was stuck between the threat of Western sanctions and the threat of Islamic riots. 

Desperate for aid, Karzai had Rahman released from prison and secretly smuggled out of the country. The Afghan response was brutal. 

On Wednesday 29 March 2006, after a two-hour debate, Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga (lower chamber of parliament) voted unanimously to declare the decision to release Rahman, “contrary to the laws in place in Afghanistan”. Unaware that he was already on his way to Europe, the MPs insisted Rahman not be permitted to leave the country. Justice Fazl Hadi Shinwari complained that Islamic laws were being ignored and that some government officials were not upholding Islamic values. 

The Taliban issued a statement claiming Rahman’s release was a conspiracy masterminded by foreign forces. The statement called on the mullahs and judges to admit that they had sold themselves as servants of infidels. “We condemn this crime of the puppet administration,” railed the Taliban. “We ask our Muslim brothers to take their position against this offence by the enemies of Islam and to act, based on their responsibility to their religion and God, and to start jihad against Karzai’s administration.”

In July 2006, to appease the Taliban, Karzai reinstituted the religious police of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Disbanded after the Taliban was ousted in 2001, this force – famous for beating women, destroying art, and turning executions into spectator sport – was back! 

[For detailed reports see Religious Liberty Monitoring; label: Afghanistan]

“USED TO BEING AN UNDERGROUND CHURCH”

As Andrew Boyd of Release International UK (Voice of the Martyrs) notes, Afghan Christians “are used to being an underground church; they are used to working under the most intense pressure and persecution.”  

In October 2021, an Afghan church leader told GCM: “Today I went to visit some families. In one home, half of them are believers and half of them are not. It has been very special, when they see me they are so happy and grateful that I have not left them. I know this is the light of Jesus they are responding to. That is what I hear the most when I go visit people, that my presence gives them hope, and I know that is from the light of God. God works supernatural miracles, signs, and wonders in this part of the world often, but what I am seeing now is more of a natural kind of miracle where He is touching the hearts of people. From what I am seeing in the streets I do think things are getting worse, but it is a very special time and I think the church here will explode in growth.”            

The “light of Jesus” has not left Afghanistan, and we – the Body of Christ – can help keep that light shining. 

The humanitarian crisis facing Afghans is extreme. Reports abound of Afghans selling a kidney, a litre of blood, or even a child, just to survive. 

We - the Body of Christ - can and must help the Afghan Church survive and grow. 

SPEAK, PRAY, GIVE.

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For more on Afghanistan and the history of the Afghan Church, see:
Afghanistan, the Afghan Church, and J. Christy Wilson Jr
By Elizabeth Kendal

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com

Afghanistan, the Afghan Church, and J. Christy Wilson Jr.

J. Christy Wilson Jn. (1921 – 1999)
No missionaries in Afghanistan? Here I am, send me! 

by Elizabeth Kendal

Kabul, Afghanistan, February 1973. German businessman Hans Mohr stands in the office of the German-educated mayor of Kabul. Having learned that the mayor has ordered his church be demolished, Mohr has come to advocate for Afghanistan’s one and only church. 

A few months earlier, in September 1972, Afghan soldiers armed with demolition tools attacked the church’s perimeter wall. On that occasion, American ambassador Robert Neumann appealed to the king who intervened to restore peace. However, the soldiers returned in February ‘73, while Neumann was out of the country, and demolished the wall entirely.

Dedicated in May 1970, the Community Christian Church of Kabul (CCCK) had been built to serve the foreign community in Kabul. Under the guidance of King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Kabul had been on a path of modernisation since the 1950s. But by 1970, Islam was rising and tensions were soaring. 

Upon leaving the mayor’s office, Hans Mohr issued a warning that proved to be prophetic: “If your government touches that house of God, God will overthrow your government.”

Eventually, all efforts at advocacy proved futile; the church was notified that demolition would commence on 13 June (1973). The church handed over the keys with a note that read: “May God bless you and your country.”

GOD OPENS THE DOOR 

click on map to enlarge

Christianity reached Afghanistan in the fourth Century, via the Silk Route. By the 420s, Isfahan (in Iran), Merv (in Turkmenistan) and Herat (in western Afghanistan) all had bishops. Islam’s arrival brought persecution and subjugation; but it was not until the 14th century that Christianity collapsed across Asia. A vulnerable minority within an Islamic Turco-Mongol super-Caliphate, the Christian communities of Central Asia and Afghanistan were annihilated; their ecclesiastical institutions shredded beyond repair. The killings peaked during the reign of Amir Timur, also known as Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane. The genocidal Turco-Mongol warlord – who ruled from 1370 to 1405 – is believed to be responsible for the deaths of some 17 million people. 

Brave Christian missionaries ventured into Afghanistan in the 17th and 18th centuries. Armenian Christians built a church in Kabul in the late 1700s, but by 1896 it had been destroyed and abandoned. In the 19th century Protestant mission agencies built schools and medical clinics for Afghans, but outside the country, mostly in Peshawar, Pakistan. Afghanistan’s strict bans on proselytisation (Christian witness) and apostasy (leaving Islam) made working inside the country far too dangerous. 

Then came Christy Wilson. 

J. Christy Wilson Jn. was born to US missionary parents in Tabriz, north-western Iran in 1921. As a child he loved to hear stories of converts from Islam and was drawn to Afghanistan primarily through listening to his parents’ prayers for the country. 

When Christy was 5-years old, Pastor Stefan Huviar of Tabriz, asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. 

 “I want to be a missionary to Afghanistan,” Christy answered.

“Well,” said Pastor Huviar, “missionaries aren’t allowed in Afghanistan.” 

“That’s why I want to be one there,” Christy replied. 

After completing studies in Princeton (USA) and Edinburgh (UK), Christy married Betty in 1950. Together they committed to serve in Afghanistan. 

Eager to modernise, Afghanistan was seeking teachers and skilled workers. Missionaries, however, were not allowed. Aware of this, Christy determined to enter Afghanistan as a teacher, so he might live there as a Christian and cultivate relationships with Afghan Muslims. 

Eventually, Christy was offered a job teaching English in Habibia High School, the oldest secondary school in Kabul. 

ZERO CHRISTIANS

When Christy and Betty Wilson arrived in Afghanistan in 1951, poverty was rampant, and the illiteracy rate was 97 percent. While there were 52 different languages and over 100 people groups the number of known Christians was zero. 

When they first arrived in Kabul, the Wilsons prayed and worshipped secretly with other foreign workers. Discovering Christy was an ordained minister, the group requested he serve as their pastor and preach weekly. Christy devoted himself to the task and the church grew. It was thanks to his ministry that quite a few foreigners found Christ in Kabul! 

In late 1952, the group planted the Community Christian Church of Kabul – an evangelical interdenominational congregation for the foreign community. Eager to focus on pastoral ministry, Christy asked the Afghan government if it would permit him to stay in Kabul as a pastor for the foreign community, rather than as an English teacher. The government agreed!

Though not free to openly share the Gospel, Christy was free to rise early and pray, ‘to show the fruits of the Spirit’, and to help those in need. To his delight, local Afghans were constantly at his door and on the phone, requesting help, seeking advice, and asking questions. 

Before long, the number of known Afghan Christians was no longer zero. 

AN UNDERGROUND CHURCH IS BORN

When one young Afghan convert was discovered and imprisoned, in shackles in ankle deep water, Christy gathered the church to pray. 

Late at night there was a knock at the door. Assuming another believer had come to join the secret meeting, the homeowner sent his daughter Cathy to let them in. When she opened the door, Cathy found the young Afghan believer for whom they were praying. Shocked, she ran back into the house, leaving the young man standing at the door. Cathy was knick-named Rhoda after that (Acts 12:3-19).

Released for unknown reasons, the convert had come straight to Christy’s home. Once they had tended to him, the believers had the convert smuggled out of the country. 

On another occasion, the brother of a martyred convert arrived at Christy’s door in anguish. He’d had a dream in which he saw his martyred brother alive in a garden full of beautiful fruit. When he asked for some fruit, his brother told him to “go to the home of Christy Wilson and ask him to you show the way”. 

“I’ve seen my brother in heaven,” he exclaimed, “and he sent me to your home! You must have the truth. What is it?” 

Despite being arrested and tortured, this convert never renounced his faith in Christ.

THE BUILDING IS CONSTRUCTED 

In 1956 the community of foreign Christians in Kabul began to pray for permission to construct a church building. Every request met with rejection. In 1959, Christy decided to take the advocacy up a level. He contacted a pastor friend in Washington DC who he knew had forged a relationship with President Eisenhower. The issue would be reciprocity: since the US government had built a mosque in Washington DC, might the Afghan government allow the construction of a church for foreign Christians in Kabul? 

Eager for US aid, the Afghan government agreed, albeit reluctantly. Still, the church faced obstacle after obstacle. In 1966 the Prime Minister’s office granted the church permission to buy land. By July 1969 enough money had been raised for construction to begin. Eventually, the Community Christian Church of Kabul was complete. A service of dedicated was held on Pentecost Sunday 17 May 1970.  

ISLAM RISING

After two world wars in which Muslims (first the Turks, then the Arabs) fought on the losing side, many assumed Islam – which had been in decline for centuries – was as good as dead. But they were wrong. For while the West was consumed with Cold War intrigues, Islam had embarked on a path to revival.  

In February 1973, having ordered the church be demolished, the Afghan government decided Christy Wilson should be expelled. The US Ambassador warned the Wilsons that their safety could no longer be guaranteed. On 24 March 1973, Christy and Betty fled Afghanistan – a land, and whose people, they loved and had served for 22 years. 

The demolition of the Community Christian Church of Kabul commenced on 13 June 1973. After a few weeks, the church had been totally razed and the rubble cleared. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the bulldozers didn’t leave – instead they started to dig! Having heard rumors of an “underground church” Afghan secret police ordered the bulldozers dig “twelve feet” below the foundations!  

Finally, on 17 July 1973, having completed the demolition, and having failed to find any “underground church”, the bulldozers packed up and went home. 

That very evening, Mohammed Daoud Khan – the king’s cousin and former prime minister – seized power in a bloodless coup. Khan abolished the monarchy and declared himself President of the Republic of Afghanistan. 

Hans Mohr’s prophecy had come to pass. Afghanistan has been wracked with conflict and bloodshed ever since. 

Despite the bloodshed and terror, Afghanistan’s underground church has both survived and grown, for God – the one who knows – is the one who holds the keys. He has opened the door – a door on-one is able to shut (Rev 3:7-13).   

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article based on the biography:
Where No-one Has Heard: the Life of J. Christy Wilson Jr.
By Ken Wilson (William Carey Library, Pasadena, CA, 2015)

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See also:
Afghanistan: Islam, the Taliban, and the Underground Church
By Elizabeth Kendal, 8 April 2022

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com

D.R. Congo (DRC): Islamic State Consolidates and Expands in Central Africa.

 by Elizabeth Kendal 

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is estimated to be 92.2 percent Christian (of whom around half remain animist) and 1.9 percent Muslim. Islam entered DRC from East Africa’s Swahili Coast at least two centuries ago, as locals adopted the Arab beliefs, customs and Swahili language of the slave traders who settled in the region. While Islam is not new to DRC, fundamentalist Islam – which is pro-Sharia, pro-jihad and anti-infidel – is a recent phenomenon. For many years, the main jihadist group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF; formed in 1995), had been more criminal than ideological. Those days are over. Today, fundamentalist Islam is spreading rapidly in north-east Congo because Islamic jihadists – when not out killing and looting – are ‘inviting’ locals to convert and join them.

VIOLENT JIHAD

The main jihadist group in DRC, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), first formed in 1995. Originally a Ugandan outfit, the ADF – the like the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – was established with the goal of overthrowing the Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni. To that end, both the ADF and the LRA received support from the Islamic regime in Khartoum, Sudan. Eventually, the Ugandan military managed to drive both the ADF and the LRA out of Uganda and into north-east DRC. WHile the remnants of the LRA eventually found refuge in the Kafia Kingi enclave, which borders north-east Central African Republic on the remote and disputed Sudan (Darfur)-South Sudan border, the largely-decimated ADF opted to consolidate in north-eastern DRC. For many years the ADF was more criminal than ideological; those days are over.

For background on the ADF see:
Examining Extremism: Allied Democratic Forces
By Jared Thompson, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), 29 July 2021

In June 2014, Islamic State launched its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria with the stated objective of baqiya wa tatamadad, or “remaining and expanding”. Subsequently, Islamic State franchises were established across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Afghanistan (ISKP) and Nigeria (ISWAP). 

In 2017, ADF leader Musa Baluku (a Ugandan) forged connections with Islamic State. Then, in April 2019 – just weeks after fall of IS’ last hold-out in Syria – Islamic State released a video which indicated that former IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi had accepted an oath of loyalty from IS-Central Africa Province (ISCAP: with chapters in DRC and Mozambique). Since then, jihadist violence in north-east DRC has escalated sharply. While the leadership of the ADF – now known as ISDRC (the DRC chapter of ISCAP), comprises mostly Ugandan and Congolese Muslims, the rank and file includes numerous battle-hardened foreign fighters, as well as many abducted Congolese youths. 

On 9 September 2021, Long War Journal (LWJ) released a detailed analysis of Islamic State’s expansion in north-east DRC, specifically in the two provinces that border Uganda: Ituri and North Kivu. 

Recommended:
Analysis: The Islamic State’s expansion into Congo’s Ituri Province
By Caleb Weiss & Ryan O'Farrell, Long War Journal, 9 September 2021 

excerpt:

“Since 2017, which represented the nadir of ADF operations and the group’s first confirmed contact with the Islamic State, there has been an 838% increase in attacks conducted by the ADF. Additionally, the overall square mileage of the group’s area of operation has likewise increased by 364% in the same timeframe. And perhaps most worryingly, the ADF has already committed 28 double-digit massacres in just eight months of 2021 while the group carried out 22 double-digit massacres throughout all of last year.” 

On 20 October 2020, as part of the Islamic State’s “breaking the fortress” campaign, ADF/ISDRC jihadists staged a sophisticated pre-dawn prison break in Beni City, North Kivu Province, freeing 1,300 inmates. 

As reported by LWJ, the uptick in jihadist activity – which has been most acute since June this year – is focused almost exclusively in southern Ituri Province: on the strategic Route National 4 (RN4) – which links north-east DRC to northern Uganda – and near the town of Boga.

LWJ excerpt: 

“The violence along the RN4 has primarily manifested in attacks on civilians. For instance, mass beheadings were reported along the road in both July and earlier this month [September]. On July 13, local media reported that at least 18 bodies, most of them decapitated, were found in several villages close to the town of Idohu – though exact details of the attack remain murky. While on Aug. 3, an additional 16 people were found killed near the same town. 

“Other incidents explicitly targeting civilians include a July 30 ambush on a convoy of commercial vehicles, also just outside of Idohu. For its part, the Islamic State has directly mentioned the targeting of “Christians,” a catch-all term it uses for civilians in the area, just three times in Ituri since June. It has largely maintained that its battles have been against FARDC troops stationed along the highway.” 

DESIGNATED TERRORISTS

On 10 March, the U.S. State Department designated “ISIS-DRC” a foreign terrorist organisation, and the group’s leader, Musa Baluku, a specially designated global terrorist. 

On 6 May, the Congolese government placed the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu under martial law; a move that has proved largely ineffective. Unfortunately, as in much of Africa, corruption has crippled the security forces, leaving officers lacking supply and motivation. Human Rights Watch reports that  between 6 May and 10 September at least 739 civilians were killed in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, almost all by ‘armed groups’. And the slaughter continues.

At around 10am on Wednesday 1 September,  ADF/ISDRC jihadists ambushed a convoy traveling “on the Komanda-Eringeti road (RN4) in the Territory of Irumu”. 

Terror in Ituri.
twitter, 1 September 2021

According to Fides, the convoy of vehicles from Bunia and Komanda (Ituri province) was heading south to Beni-Butembo (North Kivu province). Despite being escorted by armed UN peacekeepers and Congolese military at least four civilians were killed and 20 abducted, while 14 cars and two trucks were torched. More than 60 wounded and traumatised civilians were later rescued from the bush. 

LWJ reports that at the same time as it is targeting communities along the RN4, “the ADF has also focused its efforts near the town of Boga, where it perpetrated a massacre of 55 civilians in May”. 

click on map to expand

On 31 May, ADF killed 57 civilians in displacement camps bear Bogo, which sits on the eastern side of the RN4, close to the border with Uganda. Among the dead were seven children, and an Anglican pastor whose daughter was critically wounded.  According to UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch, “Several others were left wounded and 25 people were abducted, while over 70 shelters and stores were set on fire.” 

DA’WAH

LWJ excerpt: 

“In addition to its normal assaults against civilians and FARDC positions, [the ADF] has taken a slightly different approach to its Boga operations, by incorporating da’wah activities, or proselytizing, to [“invite”] civilians to adopt the Islamic State’s version of Islam. The implementation of da’wah in eastern Congo is a new phenomenon for ISCAP and a significant shift in the ADF’s historical modus operandi. 

“For example, videos emerged on Congolese social media earlier this month purporting to show a group of Banyabwisha civilians near Boga pledging bay’ah, or allegiance, to ISCAP. The Banyabwisha community are a Kinyarwanda-speaking Hutu minority in Congo with long-standing disputes with other communities over land rights and are often accused of being foreigners and therefore ostracized.

“Since 2015, significant numbers have migrated into Irumu territory, precipitating disputes with resident communities and accusations of Banyabwisha involvement in Ituri’s other intercommunal conflicts.  

“As these disputes have escalated, the ADF has inserted itself on the side of the Banyabwisha against their local rivals, providing military support and seemingly seeking to build the kind of domestic constituency that the ADF — long-dominated by Ugandans — have historically lacked in eastern Congo.

“It is likely the bay’ah videos came after the Islamic State’s men conducted outreach activities in order to bring the community under its fold. There is evidence of this occurring elsewhere near Boga, which has been documented by the Islamic State’s own central media apparatus.

“On Aug. 9, the Islamic State said that its men took over two villages in southern Ituri close to Boga, Malibongo and Mapipa. Attached to the communique was a photo purporting to show an ADF fighter “inviting Christians in Mapipa village to the Islamic religion.” The picture marked the first time that any jihadist da’wah activity has been explicitly shown taking place inside eastern Congo.

“While the ADF has in the past cultivated cooperative relationships with local communities — in particular significant intermarriage with prominent ethnic Vuba families, recruitment of Vuba combatants, and providing support to Vuba chiefs in land disputes with other groups during the early 2000s — it has not previously framed such outreach as da’wah. 

“These recent claims of proselytizing to the Banyabwisha thus constitute the first time the group has been publicly shown explicitly proselytizing in Christian villages and a major shift in the ADF’s behavior towards Congolese civilian communities since its evolution into an Islamic State affiliate began in 2017.

“Such a model of outreach to nearby communities and potential voluntary recruitment from them has major implications for the ADF’s future trajectory, and one largely determined by the ADF’s unique context as compared to other Islamic State affiliates on the continent. 

“Unlike most Islamic State affiliates, which typically recruit from and seek to govern – albeit brutally – local Muslim communities, the ADF operates in a part of Congo whose Muslim community represents only a tiny fraction of the population.  

“Instead, much of the ADF’s manpower is composed of foreign recruits who enter Congo to voluntarily join the ADF or who are tricked through false promises of employment.  Within the group, Congolese form the second largest nationality after Ugandans — the nationality of most of the leadership — but Congolese members are typically press-ganged into the group following kidnappings.

“This significantly restricts the ADF’s ability to expand outreach to local communities, much less govern them according to its interpretations of Islamic law.  

“This recent outreach to Banyabwisha communities – framed by the Islamic State as seeking the conversion of Christians – is thus the ADF’s first foray into circumventing that unique hurdle to its adoption of the Islamic State’s typical strategy of embedding itself in local communities.” 

ISLAMISATION

On Thursday 8 April, Congolese prelates of the Catholic Church held a press conference in which they protested the “Islamisation” of the north-east. According to the prelates, civilians who had escaped after being abducted by ADF forces had spoken of being “forced to convert to Islam”. The prelates denounced the “Islamisation of the region to the detriment of religious freedom”.

Asked to elaborate, Church spokesman Donatien Nshole said: “The problem here is a faction of Islam that forces people to become Muslim.”

According to Nshole, who is also an abbot, around 7,500 civilians had been kidnapped in Ituri and North Kivu over the past year.   

On 15 April the Wall Street Journal published a feature article entitled, “Islamic State Seeks Revival in Christian Countries”. The authors report that, after being decimated in Syria, IS “is starting to target Christian-dominated countries, grafting onto Islamist terrorist groups that have emerged among disenfranchised Muslim minorities”. 

According to WSJ, in recent years the ADF has swelled from around 200 to more than 1,500 fighters. “Defectors say the group’s fortunes started to reverse around the time Waleed Ahmed Zein, an ethnic Arab from Kenya, began sending donations to Mr. Baluku. The Kenyan was receiving funds from his father, who had traveled to Syria, where he had become a member of Islamic State… New weaponry helped the militants mount more deadly attacks on Christian villages and military patrols… 

“Defectors say that some of the cash brought by the Kenyan financier was used to purchase ammonium nitrate and timers – key components for improvised explosive devices. Yemeni and Syrian jihadists traveled to Congo to train the fighters in military tactics and bomb-making, these defectors say. A July 2020 report by the United Nations’ ISIS panel says the ADF had started to use IEDs [improvised explosive devices].” 

A defector known as Mr Ssali – who lives under protection in a Kampala safe house – told WSJ: “Children as young as 10 carried machine guns and were taught Arabic and Islamic State ideology. Stealing an item worth more than $2 was punishable with a hand amputation. Anyone spreading a rumor had their mouth sewn shut with wire. Turning a flashlight on when drones were flying overhead was punishable by death.”

Mr Ssali told WSJ that the ADF’s military tactics emphasised extreme violence. He said that that during a raid on a banana plantation, fellow fighters beheaded a couple and took their children, chickens and goats as booty. After witnessing executions, Mr Ssali decided to flee.

While Christians are the primary target, local Muslims are also being pressured to convert to Islamic State’s brand of fundamentalist Islam. Local Muslim imams who resist have been brutally assassinated. 

CONSOLIDATING AND EXPANDING

A couple of years ago many analysts suspected the relationship between IS and the ADF was nothing more than a marriage of convenience: all boast with little substance. Now however, as LWJ explains, the links between the ADF and IS are so close that IS-central is able to provide precise and accurate details of a massacre and claim responsibility in a propaganda video before the DRC media can even report it. 

By these means – jihad and da’wah  – Islamic State is working to consolidate and expand in the remote north-east border regions of DRC. If successful it may well move to expand further, not only into Uganda, but possibly, in the future, into South Sudan and the wider “Christian” region. 

See also:
Slaughtering Christians – Islamic State Central Africa Province’s (ISCAP) Regular Tactic For Expansion.
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM), 2 April 2021

UPDATE

The government of DRC has arrested a Jordanian national who is believed to have been in charge of ADF/ISDRC's drones. He was arrested on 18 September in Makisabo, near the city of Beni in North Kivu province. According to documents seen by Reuters, however, the man was carrying a Kosovo residence permit, identifying him as a 40-year-old Saudi Arabian national. Laren Poole, who monitors the ADF/ISDRC, told Reuters, "If this individual is confirmed to have been sent by the Islamic State's central leadership, it would also be the first clear indication that the Islamic State is providing their Congo affiliate with direct technical assistance." (Reuters 22 Sept 2021)

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Research at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom Inc (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com 

Ethiopia's Future Hangs the Balance

by Elizabeth Kendal 

On 28 June, in what seemed to be an instantaneous and inexplicable reversal of fortunes, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the Marxist organisation that dominated, terrorised and robbed Ethiopia for three decades – regained control of Mekelle (the Tigray capital). 

The TPLF’s boast, that it had routed the far superior Ethiopian military, is pure propaganda, nothing but a lie. 

As it turns out, the TPLF entered Mekelle after the Ethiopian government announced a unilateral ceasefire having already withdrawn Tigray’s interim administration.

After being paraded through the streets, some 6000 captured Ethiopian troops were imprisoned in Tigray. 

In a 2 July Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) President Gregory Copley explains: “Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed Ali on June 28, 2021, called a unilateral ceasefire in military operations against the Tigré (Tigray) Popular Liberation Front (TPLF) forces in Tigré Region of Ethiopia. This allowed TPLF forces unfettered access to the regional capital, Mekelle, and the prospect that the region would once again attempt to seal itself of hermetically from the rest of Ethiopia. 

“It is believed that Dr Abiy gave in to immense pressure from the US government, which had threatened to propose – through the UN Security Council – an armed intervention in Ethiopia to stop an ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the region. The TPLF rejected the ceasefire, and said that it would continue to fight against Ethiopian Government forces, confident in its backing from the US. The TPLF also said that it would continue its war against the adjacent Amhara people…

“What is significant,” notes Copley, “is that there has been no independent verification of the claims of Ethiopian and Eritrean government atrocities against the Tigrean people.” 

See:
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Caves to US Pressure on Tigré, Opening the Region to Major Instability
Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, by Gregory Copley, via Borkena, 2 July 2021

Recommended:
Pressure from US and EU Gives Wrong Signal: Violence Pays Off
By International Affairs Expert Simo-Pekka Parviainen (Finland), 7 July 2021 

Critically, as Stratfor (geopolitical intelligence) notes (1 July), the TPLF victory in Tigray “risks triggering more conflict elsewhere in the country [e.g. Oromia Region and Ogaden/Somali Region], placing both Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s political future and his economic reform plans in peril… 

“The conflict in Ethiopia will likely worsen over the coming months.” 

See:
A Rebel Victory in Tigray Leaves Ethiopia’s Abiy in Hot Water,
Stratfor Worldview, 1 July 2021 (subscription) 

excerpt:

“Despite the TPLF’s quick seizure of Mekelle and the ENDF’s [Ethiopian National Defense Force’s] unilateral cease-fire, the conflict in Ethiopia will likely worsen over the coming months. The TPLF has said it will not stop its offensive operation until all ENDF and ENDF-allied forces can no longer threaten Tigray, including the forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region and the troops from neighboring country Eritrea that both joined the ENDF during its November offensive. Eritrea and Amhara, however, are unlikely to accept a permanent re-entrenchment of the TPLF in Tigray. Eritrea views the TPLF as an existential threat, given its role in the two countries’ 1998-2000 conflict that took place along Eritrea’s border with Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Amhara nationalists had also hoped to use the TPLF’s decline to expand their influence within Ethiopia. The Amhara branch of Ethiopia’s ruling Prosperity Party has already said that the four former TPLF-controlled territories it seized after the November offensive will remain in Amhara, raising the risk for potential clashes in the future.”

ETHIOPIA’S LOOMING CRISIS

To understand why “Eritrea and Amhara are unlikely to accept a permanent re-entrenchment of the TPLF in Tigray”; and why “Eritrea views the TPLF as an existential threat”; and why “the four former TPLF-controlled territories it seized after the November offensive will remain in Amhara” (ensuring conflict will continue); we need to understand something of history and ideology of the TPLF in Ethiopia. 

Recommended:
Tigray Conflict: Homework Not Done by Western Countries Has Led to Wrong Policy Action
Simo-Pekka Parviainen, 18 May 2021

TPLF ORIGINS

In October 2016, Aleksandra W. Gadzala wrote concerning Ethiopia’s anti-government protests (which ran from 2015 to February 2018): 

“Ethiopia is made up of nine dominant ethnic groups and approximately eighty others. Historically, the Amhara people … were the country’s governing force. Emperor Haile Selassie, Emperor Menilek (1889–1913) before him, and Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Derg regime (1974–89) [a Marxist-Leninist military junta backed by the Soviet Union] after him were all Amhara. Each sought to establish a unified Ethiopia with Amharic as the official language and the Amhara culture as the foundation of Ethiopian identity. All other identities were to be eliminated – either by way of assimilation, or by force. In this the Derg [Amharic for Committee], was especially merciless. It perceived ethnic diversity as a threat to state unity; through its Red Terror campaign, it brutally slaughtered over five hundred thousand people – all, in its eyes, enemies of the Amhara state…

“Years of repression ultimately gave way to resentment of the Amhara and, by extension, the state. It also gave rise to what Ethiopian historian Gebru Tareke calls ‘dissent nationalism,’ and the emergence of ethno-nationalist groups like the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). For the TPLF, the state was an oppressive and colonizing force from which the country’s ethnicities had to be liberated. In 1975 the group waged what amounted to a secessionist struggle: its 1976 manifesto established ‘the first task of the national struggle will be the establishment of an independent democratic republic of Tigray.’ When in 1989 the TPLF, then already under the direction of Meles Zenawi, successfully overthrew the Derg and in 1991 merged with three other political factions to form the EPRDF [Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front], Ethiopia was subdivided into nine mostly ethnic regions, each with the right to independent lawmaking, executive, and judicial powers. Enshrined in Article 39.3 of the constitution is the right of all ethnicities to ‘self-government.’ 

Gadzala explains how the TPLF-dominated EPRDF government then proceeded – by way of violent repression – to centralise governance to the point that ethnic federalism became meaningless. “In this way,” writes Gadzala (2016), “decades of Amhara control have given way to decades of Tigray control. The presidential office, the parliament, central government ministries and agencies – including public enterprises – and financial institutions have since 1991 all been controlled by the TPLF. So too the military.” 

See: 
Ethiopia Opens a Pandora’s Box of Ethnic Tensions
By Aleksandra W. Gadzala, The National Interest, 12 Oct 2016.

TPLF RULE

In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the US government of President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Directive 75, which summarised US policy towards the Soviet Union.  US policy was designed, “To contain and over time reverse Soviet expansionism by competing effectively on a sustained basis with the Soviet Union in all international arenas – particularly in the overall military balance and in geographical regions of priority concern to the United States. . .” while working towards “a more pluralistic political and economic system” within the Soviet Union.

At that time, Ethiopia was ruled by the Derg, a Marxist-Leninist military junta backed by the Soviet Union. In line with Directive 75, the US backed the Marxist-Leninist TPLF as it led the fight against the Soviet-backed Derg. To paraphrase the thinking of President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “They might be sons of bitches [in this case neither Fascists nor Islamists but Marxists], but they are our sons of bitches.” 

This mindset outlived the collapse of Communism in Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union to continue into the War on Terror, proving that the US is as capable as any Great Power of unprincipled pragmatism in pursuit of geostrategic and economic interests. 

Despite US backing, the TPLF was still little more than a separatist guerrilla force from an ethnic minority fighting against a Soviet-backed military junta. In 1989, fortunes reversed as communism collapsed in Europe. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and the TPLF-led Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – comprising the TPLF, the Amhara Democratic Party, the Oromo Democratic Party, and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement – took control of Ethiopia. 

A 2004 paper by Matthew McCracken brings to light “the hidden agenda of Ethiopia’s central government” [i.e. the US-backed TPLF-dominated EPRDF]. 

McCracken explains how the TPLF abused its power to further its illegitimate aims: diverting aid to Tigray in order to enrich the state, and using Ethiopian soldiers to fight a war against Eritrea on its behalf in an attempt to expand the borders of Tigray.

Recommended:
Abusing Self-Determination and Democracy: How the TPLF Is Looting Ethiopia
By Matthew J. McCracken 
Case Western Reserve University, Journal of International Law, Vol 36, issue 1, 2004. (40 pages)

Excerpts from the introduction:

“After Eritrean and Tigrayan rebels overthrew Ethiopia’s socialist-military government in 1991, members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (or ‘TPLF’) reorganized into a new political party known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (or ‘EPRDF’) and assumed control of Ethiopia’s central government. After 100 years of domination by the Amhara tribe, Ethiopia’s new government, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, claimed to usher in a new era of political openness.

“This so-called ‘Revolutionary Era’ produced many significant political changes…

“When Ethiopia’s Constitution was ratified in 1994, it established Ethiopia as a federal republic, and embraced the principle of self-determination through democratic rule… the Constitution granted all ‘Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ in Ethiopia the unconditional right to secede from the nation. To Ethiopian minorities and observers in the international community, the country seemed poised for democratic reform that would end decades of oppression.

“However, soon after the new Constitution was ratified, some legal scholars criticized its provision that allows regions within Ethiopia to secede. According to these scholars, the provision, articulated in Article 39, creates an unworkable form of central government by making it too easy for the country to break apart. Under Article 39, all a region needs to exercise its right of secession is a referendum passed by a two-thirds majority of its regional parliament and a separate referendum passed by a simple majority of the national parliament.

“Most of the scholars who have criticized Article 39 assume that its inclusion in the 1994 Constitution came about as a compromise between the EPRDF and other regional representatives. Under this assumption, the EPRDF reluctantly included Article 39 in the Constitution in order to appease regional calls for self-determination rights by minority populations who were inspired by Eritrea’s secession in 1993. In other words, the EPRDF needed to include Article 39 in order to garner support from Ethiopia’s regional governments and preserve the country's national integrity.

“However, recent developments have demonstrated that this assumption is probably incorrect. A new theory regarding the EPRDF’s purpose behind Article 39 is quietly gaining acceptance in Ethiopian and international circles. Although this theory is highly speculative, it is also potentially illuminating and explosive. It has all the hallmarks of a grand conspiracy theory: it implicates the highest levels of the Ethiopian [TPLF-dominated EPRDF] government; it involves a far-reaching plan with long-term goals; and it involves the use of violence and under-handed politics in order to perpetrate a fraud on the Ethiopian people and the international community. Worst of all, it is probably correct.

“In brief, the new theory is this: the TPLF-dominated EPRDF intentionally included Article 39 in Ethiopia’s 1994 Constitution so that the Tigray region could loot Ethiopia of its resources, use the Ethiopian military to expand the borders of Tigray, and then secede from Ethiopia. Underlying this theory is the widely held opinion that the TPLF and EPRDF are not independent organizations, but symbiotic.

“The evidence supporting this theory comes from several sources. Most importantly, the TPLF put its intentions in writing in the organization’s manifesto known as the ‘Republic of Greater Tigrai’. Drafted by TPLF leaders in 1976, the manifesto sets forth an elaborate plan for the liberation of Tigray from Ethiopian rule. The plan involves two main steps: 1) re-demarcating Tigray’s borders to expand the region’s borders within Ethiopia, and 2) acquiring coastal lands within Eritrea [reaching all the way to the Red Sea] and seceding as an independent nation…”

Having written the right to self-governance and even secession into the constitution, the TPLF-dominated EPRDF then used every repressive and violent means in its arsenal to frustrate that right, while never surrendering its own vision of an independence Republic of Greater Tigray. “It seems likely,” writes McCracken, “that the TPLF/EPRDF, like the Derg before it, never had any intention of allowing other regions [e.g. Oromia Region or Ogaden/Somali Region] to secede from Ethiopia…” 

Rather, it seems the TPLF’s plan was always enrichment, enlargement, and then secession by way of Article 39. 

McCracken writes: “In addition to diverting money from the rest of Ethiopia to Tigray, international aid organizations suspect that the TPLF has also misappropriated donated monies. Since overthrowing the socialist Derg, the ostensibly-democratic EPRDF has been able to secure large amounts of aid from Western nations such as the United States. According to the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch (or ‘HRW’), Western nations have poured in funding to help the country develop, but turned a blind eye to human rights violations … not wishing to jeopardize Ethiopia’s cooperation in fighting terrorism.”

In 2010 a BBC investigation found  that the TPLF had indeed misappropriated donated monies, and that “Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons.”

This begs the question; “Does the TPLF actually care about Tigreans?” 

TPLF PROPAGANDA , AND FRIENDS IN WASHINGTON

The Ethiopian government has been accused of engineering famine and using food as a weapon. It is a horrendous accusation, one the government firmly denies, rejecting the claims as “baseless and politically motivated”. 

In November 2020, when the TPLF triggered this war by massacring hundreds of ethnic Amhara soldiers and then civilians in Mai-Kadra (Mycadra), western Tigray state, Tigreans were struggling to deal with the region’s worst locust plague in 25 years. That famine was already closing in on Tigray before the TPLF started the war shows just how much the TPLF cares for Tigreans (about as much as Hamas cares for Palestinians)! 

What's more, Copley notes, “there has been no independent verification of the claims of Ethiopian and Eritrean government atrocities against the Tigrean population”.

Rather, continues Copley, “The TPLF has, with some of the estimated $30-billion stolen from Ethiopian funds (and much of that coming from US direct and covert aid during the US Barack Obama-Joe Biden Administration), engaged in a major, professional information warfare campaign against the Abiy Government which replaced the Marxist TPLF Government. This has been assisted by the reality that the TPLF retained great friendships in Washington, DC, as a result of the [Dec 2009] deal which the former TPLF Meles Zenawi Government did with Washington to train and equip the TPLF’s private, 30,000-man army in exchange for US use of Ethiopian air basing, particularly at Arba Minch, in Southern Ethiopia.” (emphasis mine)

Indeed, the US Air Force invested tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the Arba Minch Airport runway and build an annex where it housed a fleet of Reaper drones which it used in the battle against al-Shabaab in Somalia between 2011-2016. 

But for the US to have the Meles/TPLF-led EPRDF regime as an ally in the War on Terror it had to turn a blind eye to endemic corruption and gross human rights abuses. For while the US was fighting actual terrorists, the TPLF-dominated EPRDF was using its anti-terror laws to crack down on political dissent, incarcerating thousands political prisoners, many of whom were severely tortured. 

Copley continues: “Senior TPLF officials – many of whom were given US passports by the Obama Administration – boast often of their friendship with senior US officials, but particularly with Dr Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor to the Obama-Biden White House (July 1, 2013 to January 20, 2017). During her tenure as National Security Advisor, Dr Rice’s deputy was Antony Blinken, now the US Secretary of State in the Joe Biden Administration. But Dr Rice, who is currently Director of the Domestic Policy Council which reports to Pres. Biden, had a long history of engagement with the TPLF, particularly dating from her years as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the William Clinton Administration, and as Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013... Now, the same team of Obama-Clinton officials are back in power in Washington, DC.”

INVERTING THE TRUTH

This might seem like a lot of information and a lot of background, but it really is important. For a narrative is being promulgated, and disseminated by Western politicians and mainstream media that is essentially an inversion of the truth. What’s more, this narrative – that PM Abiy is essentially a genocidal war criminal against whom the heroic TPLF must fight to liberate its oppressed people – can only take Ethiopia and the whole Horn of Africa into a place of unparalleled catastrophe; something one would assume is not in the West’s interests!  

On 29 October 2020, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) released a report by its Senior Study Group on Peace and Security in the Red Sea Arena. The report notes that political transitions in Sudan and Ethiopia have “set the region on a transformative new trajectory toward reform and stability”. However, it warns that state failure “would send a tidal wave of instability across Africa and the Middle East” (page 4).  

“Given their populations of approximately 45 million and 105 million, Sudan and Ethiopia are respectively more than two times and six times the size of pre-war Syria. Fragmentation of either country would be the largest state collapse in modern history, likely leading to mass inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflict; a dangerous vulnerability to exploitation by extremists [code for Islamic jihadists]; an acceleration of illicit trafficking, including of arms; as well as a humanitarian and security crisis at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East on a scale that would overshadow the existing conflicts in South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen” (page 10). 

Excerpt from McCracken’s conclusion (2004)

“It remains to be seen whether or not the TPLF will ever be able to realize the goals set forth in the ‘Republic of Greater Tigrai’. It is possible that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the other TPLF members remaining in Ethiopia’s central government have given up on ever asserting Tigray’s independence following Ethiopia’s failure to gain access to the Red Sea.

“The international community, led by the United States, has chosen to ignore [numerous questions] in the case of Ethiopia. Perhaps the United States is too concerned with preserving Ethiopia as an ally in the ‘war on terror’ to question the legitimacy of [EPRDF-ruled] Ethiopia’s ‘democracy’. By blindly aiding Ethiopia [i.e. the EPRDF] and the TPLF, the United States risks creating a populous in Ethiopia rich with anti-American sentiment. The secession of Tigray would only provoke more anger and ultimately create the potential for more terror directed at American interests. The world cannot afford to ignore the hidden agenda of the TPLF any longer.” 

In concluding his strategic analysis (2 July 2021), Copley wonders: 

 “… will the Government in Addis Ababa awaken to the reality that its chosen ally, the United States (for which it abandoned the Meles Government’s support for the People’s Republic of China), has, in fact, abandoned it. And would Dr Abiy, with that realization, resume attacks on the TPLF, regardless of US pressure? At that point, it seems likely that the US would do what US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already threatened to do: to seek United Nations Security Council approval for an international military intervention into Ethiopia on ‘peacekeeping’ grounds, much as the same US team attempted to do (eventually getting some NATO support) in Yugoslavia during the 1990s?”

Ethiopia's future hangs in the balance.

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Helpful Background: 

Ethiopia-Eritrea: Reforms and Resistance
by Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 25 June 2018

Ethiopia-Eritrea: rapprochement achieved; now for implementation.
The silver cloud (of peace) has a dark lining (the TPLF).
by Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 23 July 2018

Slaughter in Oromia: The Battle for Ethiopia Heats Up
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 14 June 2020

Ethiopia: Collapse Would Trigger Christian Crisis
by Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, 18 Nov 2020

Ethiopia: Pivotal Elections; Church Massacre
by Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, 17 March 2021 

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com