Iraq's Christian villages offer homes and safe haven

Thursday, November 08, 2007
BY JAMES PALMER
For the Star-Ledger

TEENA, Iraq -- Something seems out of place in the little village in the valley.

First, there are the low-slung homes with the pastel exteriors -- yellows and pinks -- that scream for attention against the rugged backdrop of pine trees and mountain peaks.

Then, up on the hill, sits the church with the squat steeple. But it's the cross reaching toward the magnificent blue sky that really stands out in this predominantly Muslim region and country.

The Assyrian Catholic Church serves 32 families who fled the violence of Baghdad for the relative calm and security of Kurdistan here in northern Iraq. The homes are among more than 5,000 units in 100 Christian settlements across the Dahuk province in Kurdistan. The Kurdish regional government has financed the developments in hopes of providing Christians with a safe haven.

"When I came here, I just started building," said Patrice Isaac Peto, an Assyrian Catholic who left his house and business in Baghdad two years ago. "I didn't know someone was going to help us."

Further north in Gedeky, Ischa Zaya Sliwa explains the circumstances that drove him from Baghdad. After earning $400 a month for three years as a chef with an American-run company, Sliwa, 52, said local Shi'a militiamen persuaded him to quit his job.

"They weren't bad guys, they just threatened me," said Sliwa, who went on to explain that some of the militiamen will "kill you without any warning."

After reluctantly abandoning their cramped apartment in August of 2006, Sliwa, his wife and three daughters moved 260 miles north to the city of Dahuk before driving another three hours to Gedeky last November. They since have settled into their new three-bedroom house.

"We were offered a free house in a safe place," Sliwa said. "It was difficult not to accept."

And not without controversy.

Increasingly, critics and some political analysts contend the Christian communities are part of the effort to strengthen Kurdistan's ever-growing autonomy from Iraq's central government in Baghdad by diversifying its population.

Franso Mattey, a private contractor who has overseen much of the building in Dahuk, said funding for the projects comes directly from the Kurdish government, which also provides stipends of 100,000 Iraqi dinars -- roughly $80 -- to an estimated 7,000 Christian families who now live here.

Mattey said his engineers and laborers design and construct homes at an average cost of $17,000 to $20,000, but he steadfastly maintains his mission is a humanitarian one.

"We just want to help the people," he said, arguing the Kurdish government has also provided funding to rebuild 30 Muslim villages in Dahuk. "There are no political parties involved."

While that may be true, critics are quick to note that the man leading the project is Sarkis Aghajan Mamendo, an enigmatic Iraqi Assyrian politician who is currently finance minister in Kurdistan's regional government.

Mamendom, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, also backs the Ishtar satellite TV network, where he is often seen shaking hands with constituents, members of the clergy and other government leaders. But he rarely, if ever, speaks publicly. Multiple requests for interviews sent to his governmental and private offices elicited no reply.

HISTORY AND TURMOIL

The Christian building boom in Kurdistan began in the late 1990s with a United Nations program that funded reconstruction of villages leveled under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Yelda Guywailgese's house was one of 20 in Gedeky that was blasted to the ground in 1988.

"They even took the bricks," Guywailgese, a 60-year-old farmer, said, referring to the Iraqi soldiers who dynamited his former house to pieces and doused his apple orchard and tomato field with acid.

Then in 2001, Guywailgese and the other villagers returned to reconstruct their homes with U.N.-provided materials.

Today, this Christian village has risen from the ashes and expanded to more than 30 houses and 250 people.

Among the newcomers are many families from Baghdad who were lured with free housing.

Despite their success drawing people to the region, Kurdish officials may struggle to keep everyone in the region.

Several of the rebuilt and newly constructed villages lack health clinics and schools, though all have at least one church.

"The first thing needed is a church, but so many families have come here with children so now we need a school," said Guywailgese.

For those who have relocated here from Baghdad, the transition is often trying.

Peto, who shuttered his shoe factory after it was looted a second time in 2005, said there is no work in the area for him. The 64-year-old businessman has turned to harvesting tomatoes and apples, and selling wood for a living.

In the meantime, Peto's 21-year-old son, Fadi, has delayed his studies because he doesn't speak Kurdish, the official language in the region and predominately spoken in the classrooms of most universities.

The winding roads running out to Teena are sometimes impassable, trapping residents and barring the priest from making his 30-mile trip to perform Mass weekly at the village's church.

"Life is difficult here," Peto said.

Back inside his new house in the rebuilt village of Gedeky, Sliwa said he wanted to leave Iraq because he had experienced "too many bad days" in his country.

The deployment of Turkish troops along Iraq's border an hour's drive north of here is bringing even more trouble.

Still, the former prisoner of war during Iraq's conflict with Iran in the 1980s vowed he would live in Baghdad again one day if the security situation in the city is restored.

"I returned home once," Sliwa said, referring to his internment in Iran. "Maybe I'll return home again."

Many interviews for this report were conducted through a translator. James Palmer may be reached at j_palmer@stratosnet.com.