IS THERE A FUTURE FOR IRAQI CHRISTIANS IN IRAQ? ‘I should have left when I had the chance’

By Nawzad Shamdin in Mosul

In June 2014, the northern Iraqi city of Mosul became a dark and terrifying place for its inhabitants. The Iraqi military withdraw unexpectedly and the extremist group known as the Islamic State, or IS, entered and took control of the metropolis.

Local Christians were given four options by the group, which practices its own extreme version of Islam: Convert to Islam, pay tax to the Muslim rulers (known as jizya), leave without taking any of their property, or be executed.

Zuhair Shaba, 51, remembers those terrifying moments. He knew he had no choice. He and his family moved first to the town of Qaraqosh on the Ninawa Plain but the IS group advanced and once again Mosul’s Christians, who had fled there, were trapped.

Mosul itself was almost completely emptied of its Christian inhabitants, who had lived there for centuries. The IS group had already taken control of 35 churches and monasteries there, either destroying them or converting some into a headquarters.

In Qaraqosh, Shaba’s family were again given the four options and again they chose to leave. The family fled to the city of Erbil in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. The region has a border enforced by Iraqi Kurdish soldiers.

Shaba’s family stayed in Erbil until the end of 2016 when they were able to return to Ninawa, after the IS group had more or less been militarily defeated by Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish troops working together with a US-led international coalition.

But the return wasn’t as Shaba had hoped. Despite encouragement from his church, he felt a deep sense of alienation.

“I no longer feel like this is my home,” he says. “Mosul was completely different, it was no longer the city I had lived in for over 40 years.”

Shaba was not alone in this feeling. Some Iraqi Christians did return to Ninawa but not in great numbers. In 2017, only about 60 to 70 families returned.

Louis Raphael Sako, a Chaldean Catholic prelate who serves as the Patriarch of Baghdad, explains that only 60 percent of Christians returned to Ninawa. The other 40 percent chose to remain where they had gone in Iraq — many remain in Iraqi Kurdistan — or abroad.

The main reasons for this decline include ongoing sectarianism, discrimination in employment or lack of jobs, and no real state support to compensate them for their losses.

Louis Marcus Ayoub, an Iraqi Christian and activist for minority rights, says that emigration is still seen as the safest option for many Christians in Iraq. He suggests that around 100 Christians emigrate from Iraq every month. They continue to fear that the IS group may return or believe that the extremist mindset they represent is still present in Iraq, Ayoub explains, so places like Australia or Europe just seem a  lot safer.

Additionally the Shabak, an ethnic and linguistic minority previously living in villages east of Mosul, have become more dominant in the Ninawa region. That has altered the character of the area and caused further problems for local Christians. Additionally ongoing political conflict between the federal government in Baghdad and the rulers of  Iraqi Kurdistan has also made the situation more difficult. An idea to turn the Ninawa Plain into a more independent entity, in a similar way that Iraqi Kurdistan is, has been scrapped because there are no longer enough Christians there to make the idea worthwhile.

“Many Christians feel that they no longer have a place in Iraq,” Shaba explains mournfully. “We no longer trust others here.”

In fact, a lot of the Christians who did return to Ninawa were more elderly and they came back couldn’t imagine starting again elsewhere. Others have remained where they fled or still plan to leave the country so that “at least their children get a good education, state services work for them and there is security and job opportunities,” Shaba notes.

“None of that is here,” he says, gesturing at the countryside. “I deeply regret not listening to my brother and applying for emigration with my family. If I had, I would be in Australia or Europe or America now — anywhere else would be better, [a place] where a person doesn’t feel threatened.”

The question for Shaba and others here remains pertinent and unanswered: Can the Christians of Iraq continue to live in their homeland after everything they have suffered, or is migration the only option for an entire generation?

This article is published in collaboration with the website, Khatt30 (https://khatt30.com/).