|
Webmaster's note:
The Chaldeans in this article are portrayed as Christians other
than Assyrians. In reality Chaldean is a religious denomination
and Assyrian is the ethnic identity of the members of the Chaldean
Church also.
Plight of
Christians provokes calls for special protection
Admin
schreibt Oct 15
WASHINGTON,
- While the successful penetration by suicide bombers, who killed
ten people, including four U.S. nationals, of the carefully guarded
''Green Zone'' in downtown Baghdad grabbed headlines here this
week, another measure of the deteriorating security situation
in Iraq came from a more-surprising source.
In an article
published Thursday in the on-line edition of 'National Review,'
appealed to the Bush administration to create a ''safe haven''
within Iraq specifically for Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians,
or ''Chaldo-Assyrians'', 40,000 of whom are believed to have
left the country since the U.S. invasion in the face of growing
persecution.
The creation
of such a zone, which is contemplated under the interim constitution
approved by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
earlier this year, could curb the growing exodus and might even
persuade some who left to return, according to the author, Nina
Shea, the director of Freedom House's Centre for Religious Freedom.
''The community
needs U.S. help to create such a district'' which should encompass
the traditional community villages located near Mosul, in the
Nineveh Plains'', according to Shea. ''They believe that thousands
of their members who have fled to other countries in the Middle
East over the decades but are not permanently resettled could
be persuaded to return to such a secure place''.
She also called
on the State Department to begin providing reconstruction
aid directly to the Christian community in the region, and not
just to Arab and Kurdish groups living in the
region.
Calling the Chaldo-Assyrians
the ''canaries in the coal mine for the Great Middle East'',
Shea, who enjoys good relations with the Bush White House, noted
that ''the extent to which they are tolerated in the new Iraq
is being watched closely by Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts of
Egypt, and other non-Muslim populations in the region''. Like
the Chaldo- Assyrians, the Maronites and Copts are Christian.
Her appeal echoed
those of a number of Iraqi-American Christian groups which met
here earlier this month in a concerted effort to draw attention
to their co-religionists' communities which has deteriorated
sharply since the U.S. invasion.
''Widespread
and systematic abuse of human rights and targeted killings of
Christians continue every day in Iraq, mainly in the Kurdish-controlled
areas in the North, Mosul, and Baghdad'', asserted a letter to
the U.S. Congress sent by the 70-year-old Assyrian American National
Federation (AANF) late last month. ''As a result of such atrocities,
some 40,000 Assyrians have already fled Iraq since July of this
year''.
''Iraq, once
the centre of the earliest Christian Churches in the world, may
soon be cleared of its Assyrian population, the only indigenous
people of that country -- ancient Mesopotamia'', warned the letter,
which also called for Congress to earmark five percent of total
reconstruction aid for Iraq ''for the safety of the Christian
population and the rebuilding of their villages''.
Communities of
Christians have indeed inhabited modern-day Mesopotamia virtually
since the dawn of Christianity 2,000 years ago. Most are of Chaldean
rite, or Eastern-rite Catholics, whose native tongue is Aramaic,
the language of Jesus. Most of the other Christians are Assyrian,
who belong to different denominations, including the Ancient
Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean
Church, and Protestant churches. The remainder consist primarily
of Syrian, Armenian, Greek Catholics; Armenian and Greek Orthodox;
and, Mandaeans, who are followers of John the Baptist.
Historically,
the Chaldeans and Assyrians have been concentrated in the Mosul
area, although many left seeking economic opportunities in other
regions. During successive periods of ''Arabisation'' in the
post-colonial era, and particularly under Ba'athist rule, some
Christian communities, like other non-Arab groups, particularly
Kurds, were displaced in order to make
way for Arabs, especially from the southern part of the country.
According to
the last national census in 1987, Iraq had some 1.4 million Christians,
but most sources estimate that 800,000 at most remain in the
country of some 23 million today. Most of the emigration took
place after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 when U.N. sanctions
brought intense economic hardship on middle-class families, in
particular, a disproportionate number of which are Christian.
As the sanctions
continued to weaken the middle class during the 1990s, tens of
thousands of Christians emigrated to nearby Arab
countries, notably Syria and Lebanon, Europe and North America.
Under Saddam
Hussein, Christians, particularly Assyrians who were sometimes
referred to as Christian Kurds, suffered from forced relocations
in the north, and, like Kurds and Shiites, were banned from organising
political parties. At the same time, they were welcomed into
the Ba'ath Party (which was co-founded by a Christian) and were
permitted to rise, as did then prime minister Tariq Aziz, to
senior posts. The regime did not interfere with their religious
practice, and, in some cases, even provided subsidies to churches.
With the rise
of Islamist sentiment, even before the U.S.-led invasion last
year, Christians grew increasingly concerned about their fate
in Iraq. Popular pressure induced the regime to adopt Islamic
slogans, build mosques and even introduce a ban on alcohol, which
hit the almost exclusively Christian liquor-store and restaurant
owners particularly hard.
On the eve of
the war, Pope John Paul II, along with a number of Iraqi Christian
clerics made private and personal appeals to the Bush administration
not to go to war, in major part because of their fears that
the aftermath could expose the community to much greater risks
and
persecution. ''The concern is that
Christians will disappear'', Bishop Pierre Whalon, an episcopal
official working with the Chaldean church,
told the London-based 'Financial Times' on the eve of the war.
''The present regime gives them some tolerance; who knows what
the next one will do''.
Those fears,
which were broadcast before the war by U.S. Christian denominations
but pooh-poohed by the neo-conservatives and other
hawks before the war, now appear to have been well-grounded.
Christian liquor-store and restaurant owners and their families
have been attacked -- sometimes fatally -- in predominantly Muslim
towns and cities, while last August, five churches in Baghdad
and Mosul were blown up in a co-coordinated series of bombings.
At the same time, wealthier Christian families have been targeted
for kidnapping by criminal gangs.
Christians have
also come under attack by Kurdish militias in the north, including
Mosul itself, where Kurds have clashed frequently with Arabs
and other minorities as they have tried to extend their control
to ''Arabised'' areas which they consider to have been traditionally
Kurdish.
''They worry
that this may be the beginning of either a jihad by Muslim extremists
or an ethnic-cleansing campaign by Kurds, with whom they live
in close proximity, or both'', wrote Shea, who said the administration
''cannot afford to be indifferent to the persecution facing the
Chalo-Assyrian religious minority''.
The result has
been an exodus of an estimated 40,000 Kurds so far, most
of whom have emigrated to neighbouring Syria. At the same time,
many others from Baghdad and the south have reportedly tried
to move back to their traditional homeland near Mosul, particularly
around Dahouk, Zakho, and Irbil.
It is this area
that, according to Shea and the Christian Iraqi-American,
should be carved out and given special protection as contemplated
by section 53(D) of the CPA-approved Basic Law, on which the
interim government, however, has not yet taken a position.
|
