Christian families streamed out of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday after Islamist fighters said they would be killed if they did not pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.The United States is complicit in the destruction of the earliest Christian communities in the history of Christianity in Iraq as a result of sanctions and the invasion of the country. As well, the US is complicit in the rise to power of IS (Islamic State) radical fundamentalists in northern Iraq.
“For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,” Patriarch Louis Sako lamented as hundreds of families fled ahead of a noon deadline set by Islamic State for them to submit or leave.
The warning was read out in Mosul’s mosques on Friday afternoon, and broadcast throughout the city on loudspeakers.
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Mosul’s Christian community, one of the oldest in the world, has shrunk rapidly in the years since US-led forces pushed Saddam Hussein from power. Before 2003 the city’s Christians numbered some 60,000 people, but that dropped to some 35,000 by June this year, Mr Sako told AFP.
The 1987 census gave 1.4 million Iraqi Christians out of a then population, probably, of 19 million. By 2003 the Christians were estimated at 800,000, with over half a million having emigrated during the years of harsh US/ UN sanctions, or having not been able to afford to have children. The US military occupation of Iraq gave Christianity a bad name and Iraqi Christians were most unfairly targeted as somehow American clients. Over half of the remaining Christians were said to have left by 2008, leaving about 300,000 or so. Now it appears that the remaining 300,000 are being ethnically cleansed in the north of Iraq, where most Christians had lived.Wars always produce unintended consequences, but the mindless rush to invade Iraq on the basis of lies and deception resulted in the destruction of Iraqi society, along with many of its institutions. We see the results in the violence in Iraq today. How ironic that the cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein, protected Christians in Iraq, even as the violent intervention by the US enabled the rise of cruel and violent Islamic fundamentalists who completed the destruction of the Christian communities.
Republicans and right-wingers can rave on from now till kingdom come blaming President Obama for the chaos in Iraq, but the facts of history show that the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush and their enablers in Congress, including, I'm sad to say, Democrats in both houses.
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteSee also: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100280803/iraqi-christians-are-raped-murdered-and-driven-from-their-homes-and-the-west-is-silent/
Yes, the silence is shameful. I grew tired of the silence, but I also wanted to note our complicity in the destruction of the Christian communities, because I feel the guilt. Here's a clickable link to the other article in in the Telegraph, which is excellent.
DeleteWhat's the old phrase: "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it"?
ReplyDeleteAgain. I heard about Mosul on NPR yesterday. There are churches there that are the oldest continuing Christian churches on the planet.
Not anymore.
Gee, good thing we invaded Iraq, isn't it?
I heard several days ago, and I let the news fester till I could bear the silence no longer. I see stories blaming Islamic fundamentalists, which are true and right, but I see little to nothing about the complicity of the US in the destruction.
DeleteWatched a Frontline documentary about Iraq last night.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I just forget easily, maybe I wasn't paying as much attention as I thought. But it was appalling how screwed up that invasion was from the get go. When Bush announced "Mission Accomplished" on that aircraft carrier, he really meant it. Troops were removed almost immediately after that, and the transition to a new government was a complete joke, a shambles, a disaster. Blind leading the blind, clown car, clueless people like Bremer completely ignoring the CIA and military people who actually had some grasp of what life in Iraq was like.
The insurgency which any fool could have predicted (or just read Hobbes) completely blind-sided them. Even when it started, Rumsfeld dismissed it as nothing to worry about, Cheney reassured us it was in its death throes.
We never should have been there. We kicked the hornet's nest, and then blamed the hornets for being stirred up.
I heard about the documentary too late. Another huge mistake was firing the entire Iraqi army. Some of the Sunnis in the lower ranks who were suddenly jobless joined the insurgency and quite likely are now part of Islamic State.
DeleteAnd just yesterday, I read about US supplied weapons in Afghanistan falling into the hands of the Taliban. Who would ever have expected...? That's why I could not help but laugh (or cry) when I first read that we are supplying weapons to "vetted rebels" in Syria. When the "vetted rebels" lose a battle or decide to change sides, we have no idea where the weapons will end up.