While President Barack Obama announced Friday that any military action responding to chemical attacks in Syria would be limited in scope, leaders in the Syrian-Armenian community in Glendale said they oppose any armed response from the United States.
“I don’t want my country to be that merchant of destruction,” said Zaven Khanjian, an Aleppo native and Glendale real estate agent who leads the nonprofit Syrian Armenian Relief Fund. “Whatever [the military action] is, it will bring death and destruction.”
As the conflict between rebels and the sitting government led by Syrian President Bashar Assad has worsened over the past two years, locals’ fears for their friends and family in Syria — especially those in the large city of Aleppo, which has been one of the hardest hit by violence — have ballooned.