By Al-ArabiyaSonia Farid
In the summer of 2014, Mosul was for the first time in its history
almost totally emptied of Christian civilians. More than 200,000 of
Iraqi Christians, who make up the fourth largest indigenous Christian
population in the Middle East, were forced to flee the city following
invasion by ISIS whose leaders gave them the choice to convert, leave,
or die then seized their houses and burnt their churches. It was only
recently that the Christians of Iraq started harboring hopes of
returning to their homes as Iraqi forces managed to reclaim the city,
which was home to one of the world’s most ancient Christian communities.
Reverend
Daniel al-Khari, a Chaldean priest who oversees a Christian refugee
camp in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan where large numbers of Christians fled,
argued that
ISIS’s departure from Mosul makes it possible to return, yet not safe.
According to him, it is not about ISIS’s physical presence as much the
culture the group managed to nurture in the city. “We can go back but it
is a question of safety. We are dealing with a new generation bred by
ISIS - they have a radical anti-Christian viewpoint and so it would be
really hard to go back,” he said, arguing that with the spread of
fanaticism he doubts that Muslim and Christian communities can co-exist.
Al-Khari particularly referred to ISIS’s recruitment and radicalization
of children, who came to be labeled “caliphate cubs” and were
instructed to walk around the city armed with knives and guns. “It would
be very hard for children here and children in Mosul to get together,”
he added. “We really need to work with the children in Mosul to change
what ISIS has implanted there.”
Long before ISIS
Romeo Hakari, head of Assyrian Christian political part Bait al-Nahrain, said that
the threat to the existence of the Christian community in Iraq started
long before ISIS, particularly with the 2003 US invasion of the country.
Hakari blames Western countries for encouraging Iraqi Christians to
settle outside Iraq instead of supporting them to rebuild their homes
and churches and defend themselves. “European embassies in Iraq,
especially the French and German embassies, have facilitated the
migration of our people,” he said, adding the leaders of the Iraqi
Christian communities are holding meetings with EU and US officials to
demonstrate the downside of this approach. The Iraqi Christian Relief
Council, on the other hand, said that Christians, estimated at 1.5
million before the US invasion, were subjected to systematic persecution
as part of the sectarian violence that started in 2003 and continued
with the emergence of ISIS so that now the Christian population has
decreased by almost 80%.
While admitting that Christians in Iraq were victims of the sectarian conflict the followed US invasion, Joel Velkamp traces
their persecution back to the era of Saddam Hussein. According to
Velkamp, Hussein used his war with Iran as a pretext for getting rid of
as many Assyrian Christians as possible since he felt threatened by
their affirmation of their non-Arab identity. “Assyrian Christians found
themselves drafted for the war more often than other groups. 40,000 of
them never returned from the battlefields,” he wrote, adding that during
his war on Kurds Hussein also destroyed 120 Assyrian villages and
killed over a thousand Christians, including priests, which drove
Christians to flee the country.
Different factions
Iraqi writer Gawhar Audish argues that
another problem that would hinder the resettlement of Christians in
their hometowns is the current conflict between different Christian
factions. “There are several armed Christian groups in the Nineveh plain
and each is fighting for its own agenda and I wonder how they’re
capable of doing so at such a critical time when they should unite to
liberate their towns from ISIS,” he wrote. Audish cited the struggle
between the Babylon Brigades and the Syriac Democratic Union as well as
attempts by the Nineveh Plain Protection Units, founded by the Assyrian
Democratic Movement, at monopolizing power in Christian areas. Audish
called the conflict between Christian factions one in which “dwarfs”
fight over “leftovers.”
Several Iraqi Christian figures accused the
state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces of arming warring factions,
thus intensifying the conflict. “The struggle for power in Christian
areas led the Chaldean Babylon Brigade to storm the headquarters of the
Syriac Union in southern Mosul and abduct the leader of the Syriac
Eagles Battalion,” said activist Haithan Bakou. Writer Caesar Hermes
said that several Christian militias are vying for power in the Nineveh
plain. “Examples include Lions of Babylon, Babylon Brigades, the Syriac
Children Squadron, Syriac Eagles, and Nineveh Plain Protection Units,”
he said, warning that the situation is bound to escalate if heads of
different Iraqi churches do not take a unified stance against the
conflict that “is bound to have graver consequences than the ISIS
invasion,” as he put it.
A sizable number
of Christians, however, seem to be quite hopeful, which was
demonstrated in their return to several liberated parts and the cross they raised on top of a hill outside Mosul as
they cheered “Victory for those who chose faith and those who return.”
According to the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad Luis Rafael
Sako, the erection of this cross delivers a message to the whole world.
“Our ancestors were buried in this pure land and we are going to remain
to preserve them with all our might and for future generations,” he
said. “It is a sincere and great call to return and rebuild.” Sako held
the first Mass since the ISIS invasion and described it as “the first
spark of light shining in all the cities of the Nineveh Plain since the
darkness of ISIS” and reassured the congregation that they are finally
back in their land.
