Persecution of Christians in Iraq: after years of strife, by 2014 it was reported that 90% of the Orthodox Christians of the nation had been displaced. Most of them are still refugees and have been unable to return home. Still others who remained are leaving now. The tragedy of this cannot be overstated. Mosul and its environs were home for centuries to a Christian community that dated back to apostolic times.
We must pray that the extinction of Christianity in Iraq can by God’s grace and mercy be averted.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in Iraq, click here.
“Nightmare over but Iraqi Christians still dream of leaving,” AFP, November 23, 2020:
The bells of St. Joseph’s Chaldean Cathedral echo across Baghdad, signalling the start of Mass for the dwindling congregation that has stayed in the scarred Iraqi capital against all odds.
“This is a safe space,” says Mariam, a 17-year-old Chaldean Catholic among the few dozen attending the service.
Elderly women pray solemnly, their hair covered in delicate black veils.
Red ropes block off every other row to enforce social distancing in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, but there aren’t enough worshippers to fill the church in any case.
A few hundred thousand Christians are left in Iraq, where a US-led invasion in 2003 paved the way for bloody sectarian warfare that devastated the country’s historic and diverse Christian communities.
Like Mariam, the 53-year-old deacon of St. Joseph’s Cathedral preferred to identify himself only by his first name, Nael.
“My father, mother and siblings emigrated after 2003. I’m the only one left in Iraq, and I stayed because I was hoping the situation would get better,” he said.
But after 35 years serving at St. Joseph’s and watching the parish shrink year by year, Nael has little hope.
“It used to be full even on regular weekdays,” he recalled.
“But there’s been a drop in numbers and ongoing emigration in the last three or four years, especially from this parish,” he lamented.
– Blast walls, rusted locks –
As hardliners fought each other starting in 2006, Iraq’s ancient Christian communities — Assyrian, Armenian, Chaldean, Protestant and more — were directly targeted.
One of the most horrific attacks was in 2010, when gunmen took hostage and eventually killed dozens of Christians at the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad.
Then in 2014, the Islamic State group swept across Nineveh province, the heartland of Iraq’s minorities.
Christians — but also the esoteric Yazidis, Shiite Turkmen and other communities — streamed out of their homes as the jihadists closed in, or were forced to convert under their rule.
There are no reliable statistics on the number of Christians who fled Iraq during these consecutive waves of bloodshed.
According to William Warda, co-founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation, Christians left in Iraq number up to 400,000, down from 1.5 million in 2003.
Their absence is stark.
Churches across Baghdad have shuttered, including the Holy Trinity Church in the Baladiyat district, closed to regular services for four years.
At the Armenian Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a terracotta structure in the Karrada area, a rusted lock has barred entry since 2007.
The churches that have remained open are surrounded by a labyrinth of concrete blast walls and security forces.
The southern Baghdad district of Dora was once home to a thriving community of 150,000 Christians, including doctors, businessmen and cafe owners, Warda said.
Now, “there are only 1,000 left,” he told AFP….
