Christians in Nigeria and Syria were hit with exceptionally brutal jihadi attacks on two consecutive weekends this month. While the circumstances differed, both have important implications for American interests. President Trump’s foreign policy team should be paying closer attention.
In Nigeria’s Middle Belt state of Benue, which has a large Christian population, an estimated 200 displaced Christians were sleeping in the marketplace when they were attacked and then murdered “with extreme cruelty,” as Pope Leo XIV put it, around midnight on June 13. More than 200 Fulani Muslim herders swarmed into Yelewata on motorcycles and on foot, firing AK-47s indiscriminately and shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” diocesan priests in Makurdi (the capital of Benue) told Aid to the Church in Need. Two weeks before, 68 Christians were murdered in Fulani raids elsewhere in Benue, including the hometown of Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, who had recently testified before the U.S. Congress about earlier Fulani atrocities in Makurdi diocese. Similar Fulani attacks are frequently reported in the Nigerian states of Kaduna and Plateau, too. This continues a sickening pattern of mass murder that results in more Christians killed for their faith each year in Nigeria than anywhere else.
Despite a decade of relentless carnage like this and indications that their attacks are coordinated and financed, little is known about these militants among the Fulani Muslim nomadic herders. Nigeria’s federal government has neglected to undertake a thorough, objective, and transparent investigation of their leadership, organization, and intent. Nor does it prosecute them. If federal troops show up, they are outgunned and poorly trained. Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu seems indifferent to the Christians’ plight.
In Benue, Makurdi tribal and church leaders’ appeals for government protection have fallen on deaf ears. For example, a Makurdi Catholic priest emailed me that the government has ignored church pleas to have naval patrols at three points on the Benue River where Fulani raiders and kidnappers regularly enter from Nasarawa State. In Kaduna and Plateau, journalists report the militant Fulanis arrive from forest encampments and attack Christian villages unimpeded, or they arrive after crossing Nigeria’s wide-open borders from the Sahel, where, the New York Times recently reported, al-Qaeda is recruiting Fulani youth. These Fulani herders are not trying to simply graze cattle, but to eradicate the Christian presence.
A recent U.N. report states that 3,790 survivors of Fulani attacks in displacement camps in Benue’s hard-hit Makurdi area were mostly “smallholder farmers” driven out “by violent land grabs.” Since authorities don’t work to return these lands, much less defend them from further attack, millions of Christian farmers are now left homeless and dependent on international aid. Many church observers see this as a coordinated effort to Islamize the area. A Makurdi priest told reporters: “It is all about seizing the lands and changing the demography of Benue State.” Emeka Umeagbalasi, who chairs the Nigerian International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, is among those who conclude that the government’s inaction indicates complicity. “The government we have in Nigeria is for radical Islamism,” he told the Catholic media Crux, on March 8.
The U.S. government does not acknowledge the Fulani’s persecution of millions of Middle Belt Christians. The Biden administration removed Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), the most egregious violators of religious freedom. State’s most recent religious-freedom report on Nigeria (from 2023) posits a neo-Marxist theory about the attacks; namely, climate changes is causing “clashes” between two rural socioeconomic groups over scarce natural resources. It overlooks the intent of the militant Fulani aggressors and Abuja’s apparent grant of impunity to them.
The State Department’s climate-change narrative is echoed by the U.N. It has posted an article with the woke title: “Climate change fuels deadly conflict in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.” It describes a Benue farmer raped, widowed, and displaced by Fulani herders, then leads the reader to conclude that the Fulani are the real victims: “‘Climate change is a new challenge that we didn’t experience 20 or 30 years ago; it’s really impacting us,’ says Ibrahim Galma, Secretary of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association,” it reports without comment.
Meanwhile in Damascus, on Sunday, June 22, an Islamist suicide bomber burst into Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church and killed 25 worshippers and wounded dozens more. Social media showed horrifying photos of carnage inside a shattered church adorned with icons of early martyrs.
This is the first major attack against the Christians since Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former head of the Islamist terror group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), seized power last December (he became president in January). To get U.S. sanctions lifted, he rebranded as a nationalist and pledged toleration of the country’s minorities. This attack has tested that promise.
The Christians fear that the church bombing is the opening salvo of a renewed genocidal assault against them. From its caliphate in Raqqa, ISIS waged genocide against the Christians, as the U.S. officially recognized in 2016. ISIS directed Christians to be killed, enslaved, taken hostage, or reduced to semi-slave status under Islamic dhimmi laws. Syria’s ancient Christian church mostly fled. Those remaining number only 300,000, down from more than 2 million in 2010.
U.S. religious-freedom analysis narrowly focuses on persecution by the regime. It also needs to consider whether Sharaa protects Christians and other minorities from non-state persecutors. The Christians, lacking their own militias, are particularly vulnerable. ISIS is now recruiting from among HTS foreign militants. A looming threat stems from the U.S. agreement requiring tens of thousands of ISIS militants and their families under Kurdish guard there to be transferred to the regime.
Thus far, Sharaa seems to be taking a page from Nigeria and passively watching as jihadis take matters of religio-ethnic cleansing into their own hands. Since the attack, he hasn’t visited the targeted Christians or strengthened protections for them. With no other political recourse, Christians defiantly demonstrated in Damascus this week, chanting “Christ is risen! Raise your crosses. We do not fear your death threats!” U.S. Syria envoy Tom Barrack denounced the attack, but otherwise the U.S. has not reacted.
This month, Nigeria and Syria saw massacres of their defenseless Christians carried out by extremists intent on purifying those lands for Islam. In each case, the violence was met with indifference by their respective governments, either out of sympathy for the killers or weakness.
Religious freedom is a pillar of American foreign policy. It’s a right we call unalienable. The Trump administration should speak out against these atrocities, designate Nigeria as a CPC, stop blaming climate change for the persecution of Christians, and otherwise effectively press these governments to protect their vulnerable religious communities, a primary government responsibility. This would not be pro-democracy nation building, but a necessary defense of a targeted minority. The endless slaughter of these defenseless Christians must be stopped.