The End of Christianity in Iraq

Christians of Iraq ^ | July 24, 2006 | Glen Chancy

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

The End of Christianity in Iraq

by Glen Chancy
July 24, 2006
Christians of Iraq.Com

The news from Iraq has been especially grim of late. Daily it seems violent death is everywhere in the form of car bombings at mosques and other public facilities, ethnic cleansing carried out by militias roving about the streets seeking victims, even soldiers and police doubling as sectarian enforcers. The statistics themselves tell a grim tale. Baghdad's morgue is receiving nearly twice as many dead Iraqis each day as it did last year. In June 2005, the Baghdad morgue was receiving 700 to 800 bodies a month, or an average of between 24 to 26 a day. In July of 2006, this number has shot up to an astounding 50.

This increase in the death toll is happening despite two events that were supposed to reduce the level of violence. First, almost 100,000 new U.S.-trained troops have been added since last year. Second, the U.S. military has an ongoing security "clampdown" in Baghdad designed to reign in the violence in the capital. Unfortunately, both the new troops and the "clampdown" have failed so blatantly, that even the US military was forced to admit that the level of violence in Baghdad has been hardly unaffected by its efforts.

Of course, the carnage is not limited to Bagdad alone. Nationwide, the situation is hardly any better. The United Nations mission in Baghdad recently reported that 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June 2006.

Life across Iraq in the midst of growing sectarian violence is only becoming more dangerous for Iraqi civilians. Sunni insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces have been increasing at an alarming rate. Attacks on American and Iraqi troops in June 2006 grew 44 percent from 88 from 61 compared to June 2005. While the number of American troops killed by hostile fire has declined, life is just as dangerous for them as it has ever been in post-Saddam Iraq.

All of this violence and mayhem is tearing the country apart at an increasing rate. In Baghdad, the Tigris river has become a dividing line between the Sunni west and Shiite east. This divide is stranding many of the city's seven million on the "wrong"; side, making even their daily trips outside for shopping or to work into dangerous missions in enemy territory. To stay alive, many Iraqis have turned to fake IDs that can be used to fool sectarian militias out hunting for victims. For $35, those with easily identifiable sectarian names can get false documents that might mean the difference between life and death on an Iraqi street.

Other Iraqis have simply packed up and fled religiously mixed areas for what they hope will be safer ground among their co-religionists. The number of Iraqis who have registered for assistance as refugees within Iraq since the 22 February bombing of a Shiite shrine at Samarra stands at 162,000 people. Many of them live in 11 new tent camps. They include Abd Hammad al-Saeidi, who said that, "Gunmen told us to leave or they would kill us." The farmer from just south of Baghdad now lives with his family of 11 in a tent.

Obviously then, Iraq is rapidly becoming a nation of refugees. Sunnis and other minorities are leaving the south, while Shiites have been fleeing the areas around Baghdad and the north. For both the Sunni and Shia civilians caught in this cauldron of violence, the situation is tragic beyond description. However, as bad as things have been for Muslim Iraqis, for one vulnerable group of Iraqis, life inside "free" Iraq has been even more difficult. For the Assyrians, who are both Christian and the indigenous people of Iraq, the aftermath of Iraq's "liberation" has been downright catastrophic.

The Assyrian Christian population of Iraq has been brutalized by both ethnic and religious attacks since the US-led invasion in 2003. Glyn Ford, a UK Labor member of the European Parliament and member of the "Save the Assyrians" campaign, recently laid out a litany of woe that has befallen the Assyrians. Ford reports that torture, kidnapping, extortion, harassment, church bombings, forced religious conversion, political disenfranchisement and property destruction are just some of the deliberate human rights violations that are both ruining and taking the lives of Assyrians in Iraq.

The President of "Save the Assyrians", Andy Darmoo, told a news conference in New York: "Today, the situation is the worst we have ever lived in Iraq."

Christians accounted for somewhere between five and twelve percent of the pre-war Iraqi population of 26 million. Most Iraqi Christians are Assyrians whose native language is a form of Aramaic. Over half of the Assyrian Iraqi community resides in the north, primarily in the Nineveh Plains and its surrounding areas. This location puts them at the mercy of America's allies, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which has been anything but kind to the Assyrians.

Shamiran Mako, an analyst with the Council for Assyrian Research and Development (CARD), a Canadian-based think-tank, told the IPS that since the "liberation" of Iraq, oppression has become more prevalent in the North.

Recently, there have been systematic measures taken by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) officials, under the Kurdish-controlled areas to marginalise and suppress Assyrians through the dictatorial policies of the KRG.

The remaining Assyrians living elsewhere in Iraq have faired little better, of course, as they have been frequently targeted by the insurgency, by religious extremists, and even by criminal gangs bent on earning ransom money. As Halfath Hamama, an Iraqi refugee who fled to Syria explained, "Our children, wives, and family members are kidnapped every day. They send us a note telling us to give them fifty thousand dollars or they will kill our family. They send us their fingers or toes, pictures of them beaten and bruised, and tell us we bring this on our head because we are Christians and collaborate with the Christian Americans."

Anecdotal evidence aside, one must turn to the hard numbers to get the true measure of the Christian catastrophe unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in October 2005 show that around 700,000 Iraqis took refuge in Syria alone between October 2003 and March 2005. Of this number, fully 36 percent were Iraqi Christians, an astounding rate given their small percentage of the overall population of Iraq.

In total, over 250,000 Christian refugees are now stranded in Syria, Jordan and Turkey. This is not even counting those that are displaced within Iraq itself, many having fled north trying to find some measure of safety among other Assyrians. Despite the scale, however, of this human tragedy, the Assyrians have largely been left to their own devices.

While the Kurds, for example, have received millions of dollars in aid following the end of Saddam's regime, aid to the Assyrians has been almost non-existent. This has resulted in many refugees living in appalling conditions. It was even recently reported that some of the Assyrian refugees in northern Iraq had been reduced to sleeping on bare dirt in Christian cemeteries.

Since 2005, the Council for Assyrian Research and Development has sought to record the abuses endured by Assyrians through the Assyrian Human Rights Documentation Project. The first outcome paper produced by the group pulls no punches in its grim assessment. The paper warns, "At the current rates of ethnic cleansing, forced assimilation and migration, the indigenous Assyrian Christians will be fully eradicated from the new 'democratic Iraq' in less than 10 years... the Kurdification, Arabisation, and Islamification of Iraq have left an ancient people at the doors of extinction."

The Assyrians have been calling for assistance, and these pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears. What is most needed is an Assyrian Administrative Unit, a safe haven that would be administered and guarded by the Assyrians themselves. While international groups such as the European Parliament have issued declarations and resolutions of support, the actual power in Iraq, the United States, appears to have already relegated the Assyrians to the dustbin of history. Unless the American people themselves choose to demand a policy reversal, it is unlikely that the Bush Administration will become interested in the fate of Iraqi Christians on its own accord.

It is doubtful that George W. Bush will be remembered as the American President who brought Jeffersonian Democracy to the Middle East. But it appears that at least one historic achievement is well within his grasp. It is quite likely that "W" will succeed where the Arab Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, British colonialism, and decades of Ba'athist misrule all failed: When "W" finally saunters off the world stage... the Assyrian Christian community in Iraq will probably be gone as well.

And the world will be a much poorer place because of it.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

"Don't respond when people fly planes into your building!"

Or leave the Jews in the gas chambers and concentration camps, etc.

[ShadowAce]

God hates War.

You are scripturally incorrect.

Mal 3:6 says: "For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."

This passage indicates that God does not change from year to year or day to day. And yet....

Exodus 15:3 says "The LORD [is] a man of war: the LORD [is] his name."
Exodus 17:16 says "For he said, Because the LORD hath sworn [that] the LORD [will have] war with Amalek from generation to generation."
Numbers 10:9 says "And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies."--which indicates approval for war.

There are many other passages that indicate you are hopelessly wrong.

As I remember from way back, you always were more obsessed with your perceived ability to "know" the Lord's will that in actually following His will.

Pride is a terrible sin.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

How dare you pretend to speak in Jesus name???

I dare, because I am called by His Name -- i.e, "Christian". Therefore I am under a Moral Obligation to attempt to read His Word as closely as I can, and advocate policies based thereupon.

Do you think Jesus would prefer to leave people oppressed under one of the most murderous tyrannts in world history,

I know for a fact that Jesus Himself could call twelve legions of angels right now, and destroy all the world's tyrannies in one fell swoop -- if He so commanded.

I also know for a fact that Jesus Himself was oppressed (and murdered, in fact), by THE "most murderous tyrannts in world history", the incomparably-vicious Roman Empire -- whose expertly-trained Crucifixioners make Saddam's most malefic torturers look like pissed-off valley girls having a bad hair day.

He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. (Isaiah 53:7)

My question is this: GIVEN THAT the Christians of Iraq had managed to survive the oppression of their Islamic overlords and keep their Faith for a thousand and more years, UNTIL NOW -- are we American Christians willing to admit that the US occupation of their country has made their situation FAR WORSE?

I mean, they say so, and they're the ones being raped and kidnapped and murdered, so maybe they have some better sense of the situation "on the ground" than do jingoistic American War-Idolaters... so are we willing to ADMIT FACTS, or not?

To me, Christianity is about historical Facts -- like the historical Fact that Jesus rose from the dead. It's not a matter of wishy-washy Easter Bunny "Faith", it's about FACTS. And the Fact is, Christianity in Iraq is being Destroyed, directly as the result of the US Occupation (nothing ELSE in the last 1,400 years has damaged Iraqi Christendom so badly, so WHAT CAUSED THE CURRENT EFFECT? A sudden inexplicable hemmorhoid epidemic??)

Kick in a snake's nest, and guess what -- you'll get snakes!!

Present difficulties notwithstanding, Iraq will one day be free and peaceful and Christianity will again flourish.

No, it WON'T.

HERE is the reality of the situation:

I realize that those Americans who think we should pull out the troops will be accused of cutting and running. But those who make this accusation have yet to produce any policy that shows how American forces and American tax money can produce peace in the midst of a Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. This conflict is rooted in 1400 years of distrust and the longing for revenge. The Shi’ites’ major public liturgical rite is self-flagellation with whips, which is symbolic of the sect’s resentment against the Sunnis.

Some 3,149 people were killed in June alone, or more than 100 a day, and the figure is likely to rise higher this month because of tit-for-tat massacres by Sunni and Shia Muslims. Some 120 Shias were killed in two attacks earlier in the week and gunmen yesterday kidnapped 20 employees of a government agency in Baghdad looking after Sunni mosques and shrines. That figure would be the equivalent of 161,500 in the United States. Can you imagine the state of mind of Americans if Protestants and Roman Catholics were killing each other in these numbers? We would call it a return of the Thirty Years War (1618–48), in which half the population of Germany died in religious war. That was the most devastating war on civilians in European history. ~~ Gary North, "Tossing Greenbacks Into the Tar Pit"

I am beginning to think that the die-hard supporters of the War in Iraq are deluded -- actually, psychologically, DELUDED -- beyond the scope of rational discussion.

When are you people -- by which I mean the whole gamut of World-Policing, Nation-Building, Messiah-State Neo-Conservatives -- finally going to understand the basic wisdom of Scripture, and come to terms with the fact that Islam is a SATANIC Religion!? It is a False Religion, it is a Christ-Denying Religion, it is a Bible-Perverting Religion... Islam is nothing but a particular Denominational form of SATANISM, alright?!

You CANNOT build a functioning, Western-style Democracy upon a foundation of SATANISM, fer' crying out loud!! When a People are enslaved to Satanism, and you give them "Democracy", they WILL vote Hamas and Hezbollah into Power.

Happy Ashura, everyone!!

Provide the Muslims with "Democracy", and you will get MORE of the above, not less. The Blood-Cultists are NOT the "extreme", "radical" fringe of Islam; they are, in fact, the devout, faithful, normative tradition of Islam.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Bringing people to Christ through irritation and annoyance.

Just call me the sand in the oyster, kemosabe.

God makes the pearls; my job is only to provide the irritation.

Best, OP

[AxelPaulsenJr]

I dare, because I am called by His Name -- i.e, "Christian". Therefore I am under a Moral Obligation to attempt to read His Word as closely as I can, and advocate policies based thereupon.

Your post is offensive and very un Christ like, give it up. You aren't winning any souls for Jesus, but then that wasn't really your purpose in all of this, was it?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Apparently God has decided to leave a billion people in darkness and damnation. All the more glory when he redeems them I suppose.

Though no one has claimed Islam to be positive OR a basis for democracy.

[BritExPatInFla]

Or maybe Christianity isn't wanted there, Y'think? It's a Muslim country, they look at christianity the same way you look at Islam, that it's a false religion. We don't want Muslims around they don't want Christians around. Pretty simple solution.

[Tailgunner Joe]

So we should let our enemies plot against us simply to serve the interests of foreigners?

Sorry, but we didn't liberate Iraq to "spread democracy" but to destroy our enemy.

America's interests come first.

[uglybiker]

Bringing people to Christ through irritation and annoyance.

aka: The Bible As Blunt Instrument Method.

[George W. Bush]

I am beginning to think that the die-hard supporters of the War in Iraq are deluded -- actually, psychologically, DELUDED -- beyond the scope of rational discussion.

Actually, it's little more than blind partisanship. You may recall the outrage here at FR when Clinton became involved in the mess in Sarajevo and Kosovo under the U.N. banner. Such howls of outrage are still echoing. And as the run-up to the 2000 election approached, both Bush Junior and McStain came out supporting him. More howls of outrage.

It seems that whether a war is good or not revolves mostly around whether it's your monarch or the alternate monarch which started it and is likely to receive credit for it.

The only likely thing that will change the uber-patriots from all-out support for the Iraq occupation would be the elction of Her Thighness in 2008. Then, suddenly, a great truth might dawn upon both the Dim anti-war hacks and the GOP partisans as well. Then they would play musical chairs and exchange rhetoric and their crib notes.

When are you people -- by which I mean the whole gamut of World-Policing, Nation-Building, Messiah-State Neo-Conservatives -- finally going to understand the basic wisdom of Scripture, and come to terms with the fact that Islam is a SATANIC Religion!? It is a False Religion, it is a Christ-Denying Religion, it is a Bible-Perverting Religion... Islam is nothing but a particular Denominational form of SATANISM, alright?!

Not relevant even though Islam is an explicitly anti-Christ religion, going so far as to teach that Christ's crucifixion was a cunning hoax by Jesus and his followers. In fact, it is the Antichrist religion on earth and has been since its founding.

Still not relevant. There's a war on, haven't you heard? No time to worry about one billion Satanic individuals who massacre their own and also rape and murder every Christian they can, a backward barracks religion that masquerades as a civilization of medieval ambitions.

[retreating to my bunker now]

[George W. Bush]

Sorry, but we didn't liberate Iraq to "spread democracy" but to destroy our enemy.

If only.

I agree with Mark Levin and Ann Coulter. We should have carpet-bombed at least a dozen major Iraqi cities into complete rubble and allowed their inhabitants to die.

That would have been actual progress if we were serious about achieving our war aims.

However, I oppose the use of nuclear weapons except for our own national defense. Iraq doesn't rise to that level of threat. But a campaign of massive destruction in Iraq would give our entire arsenal, including nuclear, a far greater leverage because our enemies and our allies would understand that we were perfectly willing to use it when threatened or hit, as we were on 9/11. Such bold action would also have tilted the geopolitical balance toward us in New Europe even more strongly and we would have had even more allies. Especially since we would have been able to guarantee a steady flow of oil.

If it is to be war, then let it be all out. Few things are as destructive as sustained low-intensity conflict. No pantywaist nation-building missions, no spreading democracy crap. Bomb them into the Stone Age, then tell the survivors they are not allowed to practice Islam (Nazism, communism, emperor worship) and they will henceforth conduct themselves as democratic republics with universal human rights within their domains but under our military supervision for at least the lifetimes of those who survived our attack.

For examples of a successful use of these tactics, see Germany and Japan, circa 1945.

Naturally, one can formulate various opinions on whether Iraq was as suitable a target in the War On Terror as Afghanistan was. I personally believe that Saudi Arabia and Iran are the real homes of the Islamonazi threat. History may demonstrate that Iraq was a useless diversion in which we dawdled away our remaining time to stop the threat of a nuclear Iran, the real home of the mad mullahs.

[jude24]

Do you even know why the coalition fought against the leadership of Iraq? I didn't think so. Idiot.

I've known OP for six years. He's hardly an "idiot." Not everyone who disagrees with you does so from ignorance.

[jude24]

How dare you pretend to speak in Jesus name???

Why? Christian Right - Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and their nefarious ilk - do so with impunity.

[jude24]

I agree with Mark Levin and Ann Coulter. We should have carpet-bombed at least a dozen major Iraqi cities into complete rubble and allowed their inhabitants to die.

That'd make us terrorists. No thanks.

That would have been actual progress if we were serious about achieving our war aims.

Being serious about the war doesn't require that we commit atrocities. It would have required more ground troops to stabilize the region and keep law and order, and forestall the sectarian violence we now see.

[jude24]

War is Evil. God hates War.

I'm not convinced God hates war - He sure ordered His share of it, and in Luke 3:14, the soldiers weren't told to quit, but just not to oppress.

Personally, I take the Augustinian-Aquinas viewpoint - that war is sometimes the lesser of two evils, a measure of last resort to prevent the greater harm of loss of innocent life. From that thesis logically follows my requirements of both justice in cause and justice in actions (jus ad bellum and jus in bellum). This, I believe, is the historically Christian viewpoint.

As applied to Iraq, that's a thornier question. This was a preemptively defensive war, started under the mistaken assumption that Saddam had WMD's and he would use them against us. This proved not to be true, but it sure seemed plausible at the time.

[P-Marlowe]

Of course, it doesn't matter if the Bush War Policy results in the total annihilation of a million Iraqi Christians; because, after all, he had "good intentions". Conservatives, Liberals, whatever, doesn't matter anymore... we're all believers in Situational Ethics now.

Hey OP, who's really in charge?

Prov 21:1

[George W. Bush]

That'd make us terrorists. No thanks.

Nonsense. Unless you consider nearly all our presidents and generals and soldiers in major American wars prior to 1980 to be 'terrorists'.

This kind of thinking is just goofy.

The job of the military is war. Break things, kill people, bomb countries into submission. If you can't handle the stress of thinking about it, go take a quiet douche in the boudoir.

Being serious about the war doesn't require that we commit atrocities. It would have required more ground troops to stabilize the region and keep law and order, and forestall the sectarian violence we now see.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. All wars have unavoidable atrocities. It is a civilian fantasy that wars can somehow be bloodless affairs conducted without impact on civilians. It's never true. And it would have required far fewer troops if we had bit the bullet and really wreaked havoc on them. Fire and brimstone. And the sectarian violence is largely an internal matter that will proceed at the same pace under Saddam, under us or after we leave. See the last thousand years of Arab Muslim history if you're not convinced.

[darkwing104]

IB4TZ?

No...

[stands2reason]

Maybe the poster only speaks for blonde Jesus.

[stands2reason]

Your Jesus looks Scandinavian.