By Wall Street JournalTamara Audi
Fadwa Rabban stayed in Baghdad after the 2003 U.S. invasion, and after her husband died in 2005. She stayed after a nearby blast blew out the windows of her home, and after friends and relatives left as Christians like herself increasingly became the target of Islamic militants. One Sunday in 2010, she went to church for a morning service with her son and daughter. That evening, the church was attacked by Islamic militants, leaving 58 dead.
"After
that, I couldn't stay," said Ms. Rabban, 49 years old. In late 2012,
she finally moved to Michigan with her children, joining a growing
contingent of Iraqi Christians, known as Chaldeans or Assyrians, fleeing
an intensifying campaign against religious minorities in Iraq.
As
America again gears up for deeper military involvement in the Middle
East, many Chaldeans are engaged in a fateful debate: Either get as many
people out of Iraq as possible to safe havens, such as the United
States, or stay and fight, possibly with U.S. help.
Iraq's
minority groups, including Christians, are more vocally pressing the
Iraqi central government to set up militias to protect from Islamic
militants. The militias would be part of a U.S.-backed plan for a
national guard, but has met with resistance from Iraq's government which
fears militias may further destabilize the fragile country.
The Chaldeans, one of the world's
oldest Christian communities, number in the hundreds of thousands in
Iraq. They survived more than a century of intermittent persecution and a
decade of often-brutal fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Now,
Iraq's Chaldeans and other Christian communities face an existential
threat in the form of the group known as Islamic State, or ISIL, which
vows to kill anyone who doesn't share its radical view of Islam.
While
the White House and Congress haven't specifically addressed what to do
with the Iraqi Christian community, President Obama has made it clear
that religious minorities in the region must be protected. "We cannot
allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands," Mr.
Obama said in an early September speech.
The
next day, Mr. Obama and National Security Advisor Susan Rice met with
Christian leaders from the Middle East, including a representative of
the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, who supports an armed international
force to protect Christians in Iraq.
Mr.
Obama told them the U.S. "recognizes the importance of the historic
role of Christian communities in the region," according to the White
House.
A spokesman for the U.S. State
Department said officials there are "aware of different proposals for
how to best respond to the security needs of members of Iraq's religious
and ethnic minority groups." He added that U.S. officials expect Iraq's
newly formed government to play an active part in that effort.
Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqi Christians face a wrenching personal
dilemma.
"The priests and bishops told
us, 'Please don't leave, this is our country.' They are right we should
be there," said Ms. Rabban, who now lives in western Michigan. "But what
can we do when someone comes to threaten you? When someone comes to
kill you?"
Ms. Rabban and many other
Iraqis are turning to Mark Arabo, an Chaldean-American activist in San
Diego, for help getting relatives out of Iraq.
Mr.
Arabo, the 31-year-old head of a local grocers' association in the
area's Iraqi immigrant hub, is working with the Chaldean Catholic Bishop
in San Diego to collect names of Iraqis trying to flee. So far, the
list has 70,000 names, he says. Ms. Rabban's brother, Luay, is number
1,271. But Mr. Arabo and others say they are dismayed by the lack of
support for emigration from religious leaders back home.
"My biggest obstacle is our Patriarch in Iraq," Mr. Arabo said.
The
Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, Louis Raphael Sako, "does not think
emigration is the solution," said Bishop Emeritus Ibrahim N. Ibrahim,
the Patriarch's representative in the U.S. "We don't want to empty the
Middle East of Christians."
Instead, the
Patriarch and some Iraqi Christians in the U.S. support sending or
creating an armed security force to forge a safe haven for religious
minorities within Iraq.
In a letter to
Chaldeans last month, the Chaldean Patriarch, who is based in Baghdad,
wrote that the church "more than any time in the past…finds itself alone
in the battlefield."
"We are very much opposed to having our
people uprooted, whether they're driven out [by extremists] or whether
it's a one-step-at-time effort by groups in the U.S.," said Robert
DeKelaita, an immigration lawyer in Chicago and co-founder of The
Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America.
Mr.
DeKelaita and others, including
Martin Manna,
a Chaldean-American and president of the Chaldean-American
Chamber of Commerce in Detroit, are pushing for the creation of a
protected region for religious and ethnic minorities that would also
have a form of self-governance within Iraq.
Both
men support the Nineveh Council of America, an advocacy group asking
the U.S. to "legitimize and support" an international armed force and a
local security force made up of Christians and other religious and
ethnic minorities to protect such a province, Mr. Manna said.
Mr.
Manna and others tell the Obama administration that a Christian
presence in the Middle East is important not only to maintain Chaldean
heritage, but to help stabilize the region, he said. "A Middle East
without Christians will become a more radicalized Middle East," he says.
Officials with the State Department and
White House say they meet regularly with Iraqi Christian groups in the
U.S., and note that the U.S. already provides significant humanitarian
assistance, including the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees.
Those who support emigration say most
have already made the decision to leave: The Christian population of
Iraq stood at around 1.4 million before 2003, but a million Christians
have fled in the decade since Saddam Hussein was deposed, according to
Iraqi church officials, leaving the number at around 400,000.
Church
officials estimate there are around 250,000 Iraqi Christians now in the
U.S., concentrated around Detroit and San Diego. Since 2007, more than
45,000 Iraqis from religious minorities, mostly Christians, have come to
the U.S. as refugees, according to the U.S. Department of State.
Nearly
half of those remaining in Iraq have been displaced, said Chaldean
Catholic Bishop Sarhad Jammo, who is based in San Diego and oversees the
Chaldean church in the western U.S. "We are watching an unfolding
genocide. There is no hope of return to their villages," he said.
"We're trying to respect the wishes of the
people," said Father Manuel Boji, vicar general for the St. Thomas
Chaldean Catholic Diocese of the U.S., based in Detroit and covering the
midwest and eastern states. Christians who flee face an uncertain
future, he said. "Who will accept them? No country has opened its doors
to such numbers."
Mr. Arabo is lobbying
Congress in support of a bill introduced earlier this month by U.S. Rep.
Juan Vargas, a California Democrat, that would exempt Iraqi Christians
from the limit on the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., and
streamline the process for their entry.
"This is a human rights issue, not an immigration issue," said Mr. Vargas.