Virginia’s Richard Black: If ISIS takes Damascus, Europe will be next

Syria has been a war zone now for four years and Virginia state senator Richard Black spoke with RT about the potential fall of Damascus to ISIS terrorists and what that will mean to the region.

“If Damascus falls, the dreaded black and white flag of ISIS will fly” over Syria, Black told RT. “Within a period of months after the fall of Damascus, Jordan will fall and Lebanon will fall,” he said, adding that the Sunni Muslim group would then target Europe next.

Screenshot Syrian rebels executing prisoners

RT notes that “Black is no stranger to the Syrian crisis. Last year, he wrote a letter thanking the government in Damascus for a ‘gallant and effective campaign’ to liberate Christian villages on the border with Lebanon. Most Americans are not aware that Christianity started in present-day Syria, he pointed out.”

Black points out the negative impact of US intervention in the Middle East and beyond for Christian populations, usually forced to flee the region due to violence. Syria and Iraq have been no exception.

“If you look at the history of American involvement,” since the first Iraq war, Black explained, “the one central theme has been that in each instance we’ve purged Christians from various countries.” Christians who lived in Kosovo for over a thousand years “are gone, completely annihilated.”

“I look at Syria as the center of gravity… for Western civilization,” Black said. “If it falls, we’ll begin to see a very rapid advance of Islam on Europe.”

Check out the full video from RT.com below.

The RT coverage quotes data from the Syrian Centre for Policy Research:

• Six percent of the country’s population has been killed or wounded in the fighting in Syria
• Life expectancy went from 79.5 years in 2010 to 55.7 years.
• More than 5 million Syrians became refugees or migrated in search of work, while 40 percent of the remaining 17.65 million are internally displaced
• Syria lost over $200 billion through destruction, looting, capital flight and GDP loss
• Unemployment is officially at 58 percent; and most of those who have jobs work for the government.

Check out the full report on Syria here

Map showing the Blue Line demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel, established by the UN after the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon after its short 1978 invasion called “Operation Litani”. It follows the 1949 cease-fire line, also known as the Green Line, as well as the somewhat contested Lebanese-Syrian border towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The map is made by Thomas Blomberg, using the UNIFIL map, deployment as of July 2006 as source.