Persecuted Iraqi Christians look forward to pope’s visit with hope

It was 5.30am and the sun was yet to crack through the Mosul’s sky. But in the distance, Father Najeeb Michaeel could clearly see the silhouettes of dozens of men brandishing their Kalashnikovs and charging toward his direction.

The marauding militants of the Daesh group were inching close. They had conquered most part of Iraq by June 2014, and were on a killing-spree.

“On that night, I saw the Daesh militants with my naked eyes. Men clad in black and with a murderous rage”, Father Michaeel, now the Archbishop Chaldean of Mosul, told Khaleej Times over phone from Mosul.

Even in the midst of excitement and hope over the upcoming papal visit — the first ever by a Catholic pope to the conflict-ridden Iraq — the archbishop recollects the pain and the sufferings of religious minorities like Christians at the hands of extremists.

During the Daesh invasion, he was serving as the priest at Al Tahira church for Syriac Catholic in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, 20 miles from Mosul.

“They had given us an ultimatum to convert or to die. We had no choice but to flee,” said the archbishop.

On that night, he was helping a group of Christian families escape to Erbil in Kurdish Iraq, which was relatively safer.

“We had a truck and two cars. As our vehicles were lumbering closer to the border, the militants launched an attack on us. There was utter panic. Families were screaming. I thought we will all die. But luckily, the Kurdish Peshmegra forces came to our rescue. They stopped Daesh and pushed them back.”

Three years later when the allied forces defeated Daesh and liberated Mosul in July 2017, Father Michaeel was the first among the Christian community to return. But the Al Tahira church where he served was reduced to rubble by the brute Daesh army that systematically murdered religious minorities and occupied their homes.

“The church square that housed four churches were completely destroyed. Hundreds and thousands of Christians were forced to flee their home from the Nineveh Plain,” he said.

It was not just Christians that were targeted by Daesh. Yazidis, Shias, even Sunnis, who did not subscribe to their harsh ideology, got killed in hundreds.

According to Vatican reports, the Daesh occupation of the Nineveh Plain, which is the cradle of Mesopotamian Christianity, hollowed out Christians from the country. The mass exodus of Christians and Yazidis – another religious minority group — saw hundreds and thousands of people leaving their homes and fleeing to refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Many have sought asylum in European countries.

The Iraqi Christian community is today mostly composed of Chaldeans, Assyrians, Armenians, Latins, Melkites, Orthodox and Protestants.

Though the exodus of Christians intensified between 2013 and 2017, the community had always suffered persecution and religious intolerance. Convert, leave or die was the choice given to Christians in the Nineveh Plain, but Daesh militants in Iraq were not the first ones to utter that ultimatum in 2014, according to Max Joseph, Iraq Coordinator at London-based Minority Rights Group International.

After Saddam Hussain was toppled by the US-led forces in 2003, the country slipped into anarchy that saw a rise in extremism.

Targeted killings and plundering of Christian property made many leave the country.

“There were estimated to be over 1 million Christians in Iraq before the invasion in 2003, but recent figures suggest that little over 200,000 remain now. Most of these Christians are ethnic Assyrians, who have a distinct culture and language which is another reason why they are persecuted and marginalized,” Joseph told Khaleej Times.

“Children have been shot dead in the streets, young girls raped, killed and left in ditches, priests murdered, kidnappings and ransoms demanded. It was hell on earth for these communities since 2003.”

According to Vatican News, between 2003 and March 2015, approximately 1,200 Christians were killed, including Archbishop Paulos Rahho of Mosul of the Chaldeans in Iraq. On October 31, 2010, 58 people were killed when Al Qaeda stormed into Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church in Baghdad during the Sunday mass. A total of 62 churches were damaged or destroyed during the past decade.

reporters@khaleejtimes.com