Iraq's Vatican Ambassador Acknowledges Rising Toll, Seeks More Help

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
December 1, 06

ROME (CNS) -- The Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican acknowledged the increasing violence in his country, but issued a plea for international support to help stabilize the country.

"We are very much concerned" about the increasing numbers of civilian deaths, said Albert Yelda in a Nov. 30 interview with Catholic News Service. But implementing democratization and stability "is a long process" and "we need multinational forces" to help "because they are doing an excellent job."

Yelda admitted ethnic cleansing is taking place in Iraq. "Christians are fearing for their lives like other minorities trapped in this policy of ethnic cleansing," he said.

The "elements of instability" are people who "lost their influence" and "lost ground" when Saddam Hussein was overthrown in the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, Yelda said. Saddam's "regime of mass graves is still at work (though now it is) maybe behind religious dimensions," meaning that violence, killings and threats now are based on religious divisions rather than the personal whims of a dictator.

It is "very important for us" that a program of national reconciliation be carried forward and that all factions and parties "become part of the political process," Yelda said. But "a democratic, federal and secular government" will take "a lot of time and a lot of different people's ideas," he added.

Yelda also addressed the issue of internal displacement during the fighting. U.N. statistics show that at least 2,500 families have been displaced in 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"During the 35 years of the Saddam regime, 4 million Iraqis fled" Iraq, he said. "Now because of war and instability we can see assassinations and forces of darkness working 24 hours a day, working to destabilize and do as much damage" as possible in an effort to try "to get back power."

"The presence of a military force is not the cause" of the violence in Iraq, Yelda said. "Certainly no Iraqi would like to see their country occupied by a foreign power and I believe many mistakes happened when Iraq was liberated," he added. "But we can always criticize about these mistakes and not achieve anything."

Two U.S.-based Chaldean Catholic bishops took a dimmer view of the Iraqi situation.

"The situation is by all means very bad. It is a civil war or we are about to start civil war," said Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle, based in Southfield, Mich., a Detroit suburb. "The whole country is in trouble. The whole country -- Muslim, Christian, Kurds. Everybody is really in trouble."

Bishop Ibrahim confirmed that Iraqi Christians are leaving their neighborhoods and towns for Kurdistan -- Iraq's northern provinces -- or the Nineveh plain. "They cannot go outside the country. They have not the means to travel to their neighbor's country," he said.

The bishop told CNS in a Nov. 30 telephone interview that the U.S. government bears "the main responsibility for the deterioration of the situation."

"They are in charge of the security. They should be in charge of building. They should be in charge of reform," he said. Under international law, Bishop Ibrahim added, "the occupying country has the responsibility for the (occupied) country. ... The Iraqis now are unable to take a decision for themselves, or even if they are able, they are not free to make their own decisions. We have to take the approval of the Americans. What does that mean? That means Americans have the upper hand on every decision."

"It's very tragic, very painful," said Bishop Sarhad Y. Jammo of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle, based in El Cajon, Calif.

Iraqi Christians "have no means to survive, even in Baghdad or other cities. They cannot go to work, they cannot go to school. They are threatened in their own neighborhoods, their own houses," Bishop Jammo told CNS Nov. 30. "They are kidnapped, they are killed, they are kidnapped for ransom, they are kidnapped for torture, they are kidnapped to impose on them Islam. Sometimes they threaten them with killing, with execution, unless they accept Islam, or they have to pay to their neighbors sometimes taxes for being Christian."

While "I don't think any observer would have objected to changing the regime," Bishop Jammo said, "I haven't seen any success after the collapse of the regime. I haven't seen anything really a success story. I don't know if the planning was totally inadequate, or badly designed."