By Abdul Masih —
Formerly freeing kids from sex trafficking in Latin America, Tim Ballard is now in Syria rescuing Druze and Christian kids being slaughtered, starved and deprived of medicine by the Islamist government of Al-Qaeda-linked President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“Children aren’t an ideology. I don’t have an ideology,” Ballard says. “If you save kids, it’s black and white: Hamas are the bad guys, and people who fight Hamas are the good guys. Hamas trains Palestinian kids in summer camps to kill Jews. They put fake knives in their hands and get the kids to say, ‘I want to kill Jews.'”
As the ceasefire with Hamas teeters on the brink of collapse, Ballard says that spiritual warfare is what blinds people to the realities of the region, whether in Gaza, the West Bank or Syria.
“Under the rule of the Qur’an, they believe they should kill infidels. It’s a death cult,” Ballard says. “Their goal is to kill, kill, kill. That’s their mission.”
On July 14, according to Ballard, the Islamist government set up a fake Bedouin community and started a conflict with the Druze. The Syrian authorities then entered to “restore order” but only killed Druze and Christians — no Bedouins, who are Muslim like the Islamist government. The Syrian Network for Human Rights documented at least 1,013 deaths since July 13, the vast majority occurring after the army’s intervention.
Ballard sees similarities between the July14 Druze massacre and what Hamas did to Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He also compares it to what ISIS did to Yazidis and Christians in Iraq. A 2017 study published in PLoS Medicine estimated that around 3,100 Yazidis were killed, with many shot, beheaded or burned alive, while another 6,800 were abducted, primarily women and children forced into sexual slavery or combat.
The current president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharaa (formerly Al-Jolani) was a Syrian youth who drifted in jihad in Iraq. Later he worked in conjunction with ISIS and Al-Qaeda to establish the caliphate in Syria. In 2017, he broke with Al-Qaeda and set up what evolved into Hayʾat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which took over Syria this year after Israel decimated Hezbollah and compromised dictator Bashar al-Assad‘s military.
The Islamist government of Syria has killed more religious minorities (Druze, Christians, others) than Hamas killed Jews on Oct. 7, Ballard says. “They’ve burned six or seven Christian churches,” he says. “And the world kept silent.
“No one is even talking about this because if you expose what’s happening in Syria, you immediately expose what’s happening in Gaza. You get rid of smoke screen,” he adds. “The Western media doesn’t want to get rid of the smoke screen for whatever spiritual, devilish disease reason.”
Ballard was an agent with Department of Homeland Security on the Mexican border but grew frustrated on bureaucratic limitations; he wanted to bust traffickers and free children. So he quit and launched in 2013 the privately funded Operation Underground Railroad, which became the inspiration for the movie Sound of Freedom in 2023.
The Syrian killings of Christian and Druze in July angered him and he went to Israel, where he has been working with Israeli officials and U.S. congressmen to set up a IDF-guaranteed safety corridor in which they can feed and attend to Syrian children.
“I just work for the Messiah. I call him Jesus,” says Ballard, who is Mormon. “I work for God. It’s great because there’s no Deep State, no red tape, then I can get stuff done.”
With 1M followers on his social media and with connections in government, Ballard proposes to coordinate resources to help the children of Syria.
