GREY circles around bloodshot eyes accentuate the deep grooves of a face that has seen decades of labour in the sun. It is clear that Hagop, a farmer, has had little rest in the fortnight since he fled his home in northern Syria. “We’re all still dizzy,” he says, looking around his new refuge, a single-storey house in the eastern Lebanese-Armenian town of Anjar, in the agricultural plains three kilometres from the Syrian border. Hagop (a pseudonym, as he would only speak on condition of anonymity, fearing for relatives still in Syria) arrived ten days ago from Kassab, an Armenian town on the Syrian-Turkish border. The resort town was captured by Syrian rebels, including al-Qaeda-linked groups, on March 21st, sparking now-discredited allegations of a massacre of the Christian Armenian population.

In yet another example of a propaganda war being waged alongside the conventional one, Syrian and their allied Russian officials backed the claims. An online “Save Kassab” campaign won celebrity endorsement from the likes of Armenian-American reality TV star Kim Kardashian. Schools and shops in Beirut’s Armenian neighbourhoods closed to mark the “tragedy”.

Yet Hagop looked bewildered when asked if he had heard of such a massacre. He says no one was killed—a statement repeated by Anjar’s mayor, Sarkis Pamboukian.

The Armenians accuse an old foe for their woes. Scenes of mass panic on the day the town fell were sparked largely by rumours of a Turkish invasion, reopening wounds in the collective memory of the Armenians, victims of what is widely recognised as a genocide at the Turks’ hands in 1915. “I heard explosions, so I called friends, who said there was an attack from the Turkish border,” says Hagop.

No Turkish invasion materialised, but Anjar’s residents are adamant their historic adversaries were the masterminds behind the attack. “This is a continuation of Turkey’s project to take Kassab,” says Mr Pamboukian. “The rebels couldn’t have entered without their [Turkey’s] permission,” says Hagop, repeating claims made by non-Armenians too. Turkey’s foreign ministry says the accusations are “entirely baseless”.

There are around 100,000 Armenians in Syria, which has been a safe haven for minorities and displaced people including thousands of Palestinians, who are now finding themselves uprooted once more. Partly for this reason, Syrian Armenians and their Lebanese brethren in Anjar share quiet support for Syria’s Assad regime.

Despite Anjar’s beginnings as a squalid camp for refugees fleeing Turkey’s annexation of Hatay from Syria in 1939, the Christian town has effectively closed its doors to the 1m Syrian Arab refugees in Lebanon, the majority of whom are Sunni Muslims opposed to the regime. “If we find a Syrian in the street with no papers, we take him to the police”, says Ohanes Khoshian, the deputy mayor with the brusque manner of a man with little fondness for outsiders. The municipality also enforces a curfew on Syrians.

Still, the Armenians reject that sectarianism dictates their allegiances. Mr Pamboukian claims relations with Sunni neighbouring towns are “very good” while Hagop denies sectarianism explains Armenians’ support for Assad. He puts it down to the community’s traditional political passivity. “Armenians, wherever we are, don’t get into politics. Whoever rules is the ruler. They’re all the same for us.”