By The National
Iraq's Christians are calling for an internationally protected safe zone to let them rebuild their lives after the brutal rule of ISIS that threatened to end their 2,000-year history.
Iraq's Christians are calling for an internationally protected safe zone to let them rebuild their lives after the brutal rule of ISIS that threatened to end their 2,000-year history.
Although the Iraqi government declared victory against the terror
group in 2017, Christians are continually targeted and caught in the
middle of sectarian conflict, said Zina Kiryakos, president of the Iraqi
Christian Foundation.
“We want an internationally protected safe zone to give the genocide
victims the ability to rebuild and recover in Nineveh Plains with peace
and security,” Ms Kiryakos told The National.
Iraq is home to a variety Christian denominations, a representation of the country’s religious and ethnic diversity.
But the damage done to Christian enclaves on the Nineveh Plains, east
of Mosul, after their capture by ISIS has been so extensive that it has
become difficult for minorities to exist in peace.
The Iranian-backed militias mobilised to fight ISIS, also known as
Hashed Al Shaabi, have against the will of local Christians taken over
the liberated Syriac towns of Qaraqosh and Bartella, and the Chaldean
town of Karemlash in Eastern Mosul, Ms Kiryakos said.
“Many Christians living in Nineveh Plains are fearful of returning to
their homes in those areas due to the Shiite militias taking over their
towns,” she said.
The militias are trying to take over the Nineveh Plains to make a
road for themselves from Iran to Lebanon, passing through Iraq and
Syria, Ms Kiryakos said.
The US, whose forces helped Iraqi troops to defeat ISIS, and the Iraqi government have rejected the idea of a safe zone.
Christians also proposed that the US-led global coalition against
ISIS could train them to guard and police their towns under the
authority of the government, but this was also turned down, Ms Kiryakos
said.
She said Iraqi Christians were shocked when US President Donald Trump
said in January that US troops would remain in Syria to protect the
Syrian Kurds and help to create a safe zone for them in the country's
north-east.
“After hearing this news, Iraqi Christian advocates decided to
publicly cry foul play since our calls for an internationally protected
safe zone for Christian victims of ISIS in northern Iraq were ignored
for years,” Ms Kiryakos said.
Christians in Mosul were forced to flee when ISIS seized the northern
city in mid-2014 and began destroying centuries-old religious sites,
ending a presence that once numbered in the tens of thousands and went
back to Christianity’s earliest years.
Today, Iraq has nearly 500,000 Christians, according to Cardinal
Louis Raphael Sako, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans and head of
the Chaldean Catholic Church.
“At one point Christians represented 20 per cent of the Iraqi
population, but the number dropped to 10 per cent and it now stands at 2
per cent,” he told The National in February.
The number of Christians started to decline after the US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Like millions of other Iraqis forced to leave their homes when ISIS
seized a third of the country, members of the Christian community have
moved from northern towns and villages to the capital or other cities,
and many joined the masses fleeing to Europe.