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ASSYRIANS AND CHRISTIANS UNDER ATTACK YET AGAIN IN IRAQ AND SYRIA
The Irish Times
June 19, 2014 Thursday
The two ethnic groups have a history marred by years of bloodshed
by Stephen Starr
With extremists battling for control of Iraq's largest oilfield on
Tuesday, upping the stakes in a burgeoning war against the central
government in Baghdad, Iraq's Christians once again find themselves
at risk.
Over the past 10 days, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a fundamentalism
jihadist group, has streamed across the Nineveh plains of northern
Iraq from its bases in eastern Syria, capturing a line of towns and
cities, including several with large Assyrian and Chaldean Christian
populations.
Some 160 Christian families have fled Mosul, Iraq's second largest
city, for Christian-inhabited towns and villages in northern Iraq
over the past week, according to Associated Press.
Hundreds more have left seeking safety in the autonomous Kurdish region
to the east. Mosul was home to about 130,000 Christians before the
US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq and following last week's Isis takeover,
is reported to be almost empty of Christian families.
Assyrians are one of the oldest indigenous communities in the region.
Their roots in what is today northern Iraq and eastern Syria go back
over 2,000 years, with the latter stages of that history increasingly
marred by bloodshed.
During the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as the first World War
unfolded, about 750,000 Assyrians were killed as part of the broader
slaughter of Christian Armenians and Greeks in modern-day Syria,
Iraq and Turkey.
Then in 1933, about 3,000 Assyrian Christians were killed by Iraqi
soldiers and Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Sumel, leading to
mass migration across the border to Syria.
Hellish time More recently, Christians in Iraq have experienced
a hellish time. On Christmas Day last year, 37 people were killed
in a series of car bomb attacks close to churches in Baghdad, the
Iraqi capital.
The wave of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations following the
2003 invasion saw many of the city's Christians flee to northern Iraq
where they have lived in relative safety, until now. As a result,
Iraq's Christian community is today thought to number just 40 per cent
of its pre-2003 figure, and today, in the face of the Isis assault,
is on the move again.
"Each day we went to bed in fear . . . In our own houses we knew no
rest," a Christian woman from Alqosh in northern Iraq told reporters,
speaking of the threat from jihadists.
The danger to Christians in northern Iraq appears not only in the
form of jihadists. With Isis viewed as likely to encounter difficulty
in holding on to territory in the face of an impending fight-back
from better-equipped government forces, a long-standing threat to
the slivers of territory in northern Iraq inhabited by Christians
has appeared.
Kurdish militias According to the Assyrian International News Agency,
a total of 14 Assyrian towns and villages in the north have in the
past week fallen under the control of Kurdish militias.
Iraq's Kurds have their own designs of expanding territorial control
across the north, including to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk which
Kurdish peshmerga control since late last week.
The peace and stability enjoyed in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous
region in the north of the country and home to the country's five
million Kurds, has proved a rare bright spot in Iraq's recent history.
"The Kurds control now most of the disputed territories," said Wladimir
Van Wilgenburg, a columnist with Al Monitor and an expert on Kurdish
affairs. "They now almost have their national desired borders, only
in Diyala [province] there is still a border with the Iraqi army,
the rest of the 1,000km is with the Isis."
Syrian threat In I
sis-controlled eastern Syria, Christians have fared little better.
Last March, the jihadist group announced Christians there must convert
to Islam, pay a tax or face death. Churches have been damaged and
crosses, paintings and statues burned in Raqqa, a city in Syria's
east. Several Syrian and foreign priests have been kidnapped and
killed by jihadists in Syria over the past three years.
But Christians are preparing to fight back. Their militias today
form an important cog in the Syrian regime's fighting force in the
shape of National Defence Forces - groups of civilians armed by the
Syrian regime.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has called on civilians to take
up arms and fight against Isis; reports say about 600 Christians in
the town of Bartella, 20km from Isis-controlled Mosul, are defending
their homes with machine guns and other light weapons.
With the US and other Western governments slow to become involved in
another Iraq quagmire, the threat to Christians and other minorities
is set to mount.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
The Irish Times
June 19, 2014 Thursday
The two ethnic groups have a history marred by years of bloodshed
by Stephen Starr
With extremists battling for control of Iraq's largest oilfield on
Tuesday, upping the stakes in a burgeoning war against the central
government in Baghdad, Iraq's Christians once again find themselves
at risk.
Over the past 10 days, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a fundamentalism
jihadist group, has streamed across the Nineveh plains of northern
Iraq from its bases in eastern Syria, capturing a line of towns and
cities, including several with large Assyrian and Chaldean Christian
populations.
Some 160 Christian families have fled Mosul, Iraq's second largest
city, for Christian-inhabited towns and villages in northern Iraq
over the past week, according to Associated Press.
Hundreds more have left seeking safety in the autonomous Kurdish region
to the east. Mosul was home to about 130,000 Christians before the
US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq and following last week's Isis takeover,
is reported to be almost empty of Christian families.
Assyrians are one of the oldest indigenous communities in the region.
Their roots in what is today northern Iraq and eastern Syria go back
over 2,000 years, with the latter stages of that history increasingly
marred by bloodshed.
During the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as the first World War
unfolded, about 750,000 Assyrians were killed as part of the broader
slaughter of Christian Armenians and Greeks in modern-day Syria,
Iraq and Turkey.
Then in 1933, about 3,000 Assyrian Christians were killed by Iraqi
soldiers and Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Sumel, leading to
mass migration across the border to Syria.
Hellish time More recently, Christians in Iraq have experienced
a hellish time. On Christmas Day last year, 37 people were killed
in a series of car bomb attacks close to churches in Baghdad, the
Iraqi capital.
The wave of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations following the
2003 invasion saw many of the city's Christians flee to northern Iraq
where they have lived in relative safety, until now. As a result,
Iraq's Christian community is today thought to number just 40 per cent
of its pre-2003 figure, and today, in the face of the Isis assault,
is on the move again.
"Each day we went to bed in fear . . . In our own houses we knew no
rest," a Christian woman from Alqosh in northern Iraq told reporters,
speaking of the threat from jihadists.
The danger to Christians in northern Iraq appears not only in the
form of jihadists. With Isis viewed as likely to encounter difficulty
in holding on to territory in the face of an impending fight-back
from better-equipped government forces, a long-standing threat to
the slivers of territory in northern Iraq inhabited by Christians
has appeared.
Kurdish militias According to the Assyrian International News Agency,
a total of 14 Assyrian towns and villages in the north have in the
past week fallen under the control of Kurdish militias.
Iraq's Kurds have their own designs of expanding territorial control
across the north, including to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk which
Kurdish peshmerga control since late last week.
The peace and stability enjoyed in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous
region in the north of the country and home to the country's five
million Kurds, has proved a rare bright spot in Iraq's recent history.
"The Kurds control now most of the disputed territories," said Wladimir
Van Wilgenburg, a columnist with Al Monitor and an expert on Kurdish
affairs. "They now almost have their national desired borders, only
in Diyala [province] there is still a border with the Iraqi army,
the rest of the 1,000km is with the Isis."
Syrian threat In I
sis-controlled eastern Syria, Christians have fared little better.
Last March, the jihadist group announced Christians there must convert
to Islam, pay a tax or face death. Churches have been damaged and
crosses, paintings and statues burned in Raqqa, a city in Syria's
east. Several Syrian and foreign priests have been kidnapped and
killed by jihadists in Syria over the past three years.
But Christians are preparing to fight back. Their militias today
form an important cog in the Syrian regime's fighting force in the
shape of National Defence Forces - groups of civilians armed by the
Syrian regime.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has called on civilians to take
up arms and fight against Isis; reports say about 600 Christians in
the town of Bartella, 20km from Isis-controlled Mosul, are defending
their homes with machine guns and other light weapons.
With the US and other Western governments slow to become involved in
another Iraq quagmire, the threat to Christians and other minorities
is set to mount.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress