By Express.co.uk, December 12, 2010
By Kirsty Buchanan, Political Editor
THE congregation receives death threats, there are 35 soldiers manning the perimeter fence and the vicar travels to work with 12 bodyguards in three armoured vehicles. Welcome to Christian worship, Baghdad-style.
In the last year St George’s in Iraq’s capital has been bombed four times but the “very ugly and very solid” church is still standing.
Its Anglican vicar, Canon Andrew White, and his parishioners are also standing firm despite a horrific escalation in sectarian violence aimed at driving Christians out of the country.
In the last month alone 100 Christians have been killed in Iraq by Shia militia and Sunni insurgents supportive of Al Qaeda. In October, 58 people were killed during evening mass at the Syrian Catholic church of Our Lady of Salvation in Iraq.
St George’s, Iraq’s only Anglican church, has had its windows blown out in four separate bomb attacks.
It is deemed too dangerous for any Iraqi Government employee to visit and when the British Ambassador paid a call, he came with air support.
Canon White, dubbed “the Vicar of Baghdad”, goes to work wearing body armour and members of the congregation are frisked as they go in. It is a testament to the power of their faith that they return week after week.
An estimated 1.2 million Christians lived in Iraq at the time of the 2003 war. Since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled that number has plunged to 600,000 as families flee a horrific wave of persecution from Islamic extremists.
In August, 2004, a series of bombings against five churches left 11 dead.
In October, 2006, Orthodox priest Boulos Iskander was snatched in Mosul by a group demanding a ransom. Although the ransom was paid, the priest’s mutilated body was later found with his head, arms and legs hacked off. In June, 2007, Ragheed Ganni, a priest and secretary to the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, was shot dead in his church.
In January, 2008, bombs exploded at three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul, two in Kirkuk and four in Baghdad.
A month later Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped. After two weeks his body was found in a shallow grave.
In April, 2008, Assyrian Orthodox priest Father Adel Youssef was shot dead and in February, 2010, eight Christians were assassinated in a two-week killing spree in Mosul. This horrendous level of violence led last week to 16 Assyrian groups calling for the formation of a 19th Century province in the Nineveh plains, where there would be a Christian majority.
They argue a separate province would allow Christians to protect themselves by having control of their own police and local militia.
Senior Conservative MP Edward Leigh, one of the few Tories who voted against the Iraq war, agreed. “We have a responsibility in this country because, for all Saddam Hussein’s horrendous faults, there was some sort of protection for the Christian community in Iraq,” he said.
“We invaded Iraq and since then the situation for Christians has become deplorable, frightful and murderous.”
However, Conservative MP Andrew Selous, who recently highlighted the plight of Iraq’s Christians, said: “I hope that a major Middle-Eastern country such as Iraq can do better than to opt for any form of segregation or ghettoisation of different faiths.”
Canon White and the congregation of St George’s fear the ghettoisation of Christians would only make the community easier to attack.
Peter Marsden, director of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East said: “Not only would it fracture the community, if all the Christians are in one place it makes it a lot easier to bomb.” Neither, says Mr Marsden, would Canon White advocate flight from Iraq: “He is a very brave man. He is committed to his people and he is very committed to the cause of peace and negotiation. Part of our work is to bring together the religious leaders across the sectarian divide, to bring together Sunni and Shia clerics to talk about how they might stop killing each other, and us.”
An emergency summit is being held in Copenhagen next month to discuss ways of reining back on the violence, which has sharply increased in recent months. No one is sure why but one suggestion is that they are in retaliation for the foolhardy threat to burn the Koran made by Florida Minister Terry Jones in September.
There are now an estimated 25,000 Christian refugees living in Syria but Iraq would be the poorer for the exodus of its remaining Christian families. Well educated and peaceful, they form a large part of Iraq’s professional class, its doctors, nurses and civil servants.
Iraq’s own Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim is a Chaldean Catholic. Three weeks ago her head of security was killed in a bomb attack, which also claimed the life of her deputy chief of staff. Her chief of staff was killed in a separate car bomb attack last week.
The UK Government has condemned the violence but insists it will not support the idea of a separate province nor help terrorists drive Christians from Iraq with “offers of asylum”.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri-al Maliki has promised the government is “doing everything possible to tackle the terrorist threat” and has said that a series of arrests have been made in relation to the Our Lady of Salvation massacre. The Iraqi parliament has called on the government to do more to stop the attacks. It also wants an increased recruitment drive to bring Christians into the security forces.
Despite these calls, the parishioners of St George’s can look forward to another Christmas of checkpoints, security searches and death threats.
Mr Selous said: “Some foreign countries and Iraqis in exile have called for greater provision to be made for Christians in Iraq to leave and settle overseas." The view of Canon Andrew White and his congregation at St George’s in Baghdad is they wish to stay and be safe where they are.
“That should not be too much to ask for.”