As Christians around the world celebrate Christmas, there is no joy among the ancient Christian community of Syria. There have been Christians there longer than anywhere. Antioch, located just across the Turkish border from northwest Syria, is where the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. How much longer Syria’s Christian community can survive, after two thousand years, is in doubt.

The sudden fall of Bashar Assad and his regime at the beginning of this month has been greeted enthusiastically by many. Certainly, the collapse of a repressive dictatorship that ran Syria as a familial fiefdom with an iron fist for 45 years is cause for celebration. And the geostrategic implications of Assad’s fall include several positives for the West. Regime change is a profound blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military intervention in Syria’s civil war in 2015 bought the Assad regime almost another decade in power. Now, with Russia’s military bogged down in Ukraine, Putin had minimal aid to offer its friend in Damascus. Instead, Assad and his retinue fled to Moscow.