WASHINGTON -
While the successful penetration by suicide bombers, who
killed 10 people, including four United States
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 online edition of
the right-wing National Review, an influential
neo-conservative activist 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 who are believed to have
left the country since the US invasion in the face of
growing persecution.
The creation of such a
zone, which is contemplated under the interim
constitution approved by the US-led Coalition
Provisional Authority 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 Center for Religious Freedom.
"The community needs US 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 life in their co-religionists' communities,
which has deteriorated sharply since the US invasion in
March 2003.
"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 US Congress sent by
the 70-year-old Assyrian American National Federation
late in September. "As a result of such atrocities, some
40,000 Assyrians have already fled Iraq since July of
this year," it added.
"Iraq, once the center 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 5% of total reconstruction aid for
Iraq "for the safety of the Christian population and the
rebuilding of their villages".
Communities of
Christians have inhabited modern-day Mesopotamia
virtually since the dawn of Christianity 2,000 years
ago. Most are Chaldeans, 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 "Arabization" 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 UN
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 former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein, Christians, particularly Assyrians, who were
sometimes referred to as Christian Kurds, suffered from
forced relocations in the north, and, like Kurds and
Shi'ites, were banned from organizing 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 US-led invasion,
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 US 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
"Arabized" 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 Chaldo-Assyrian religious
minority".
The result has been an exodus of an
estimated 40,000 Christians so far, most of who have
emigrated to neighboring 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-Americans, should be carved out and given special
protection as contemplated by section 53(d) of the
CPA-approved Basic Law, on which the interim Iraqi
government, however, has not yet taken a position.
