With the Islamic State (IS) group routed at last, one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East has a chance to reoccupy its ancestral towns.
However, the Chaldean and Syriac people of the Nineveh Plain in Iraq need support to rebuild their homes, and are still anxious that fighting will return.
Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, hopes that US President Donald Trump’s administration will redirect US aid to his persecuted people.
In an interview in Washington, he said Christians could help quell frontline tensions between Iraqi and Kurdish forces.
US Vice President Mike Pence and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley have suggested redirecting funds from UN aid agencies to Christian charities.
However, with almost 20,000 Iraqi Christian families — about 100,000 people — driven from their homes, the bishop is calling for urgent action.
“This is a just case,” he told reporters of his people. “They are persecuted, they are marginalized and they are in need.”
Iraqis of all religions, of course, suffered greatly under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the conflicts that followed his overthrow in 2003.
However, smaller minorities, like the Christians and their neighbors the Yazidis were targeted by extremists in the latest round of bloodletting.
The IS, the latest incarnation of Sunni Muslim violent extremism, unleashed what US officials have branded a genocidal campaign.
For Warda and his supporters in US-based charity and church movements, it is thus only fair to ask Washington to treat their case differently.
Iraq’s Kurds have an autonomous region and militia that shielded them and the minority refugees they sheltered from the recent violence.
The country’s Arab Shiite majority is the focus of the Baghdad government’s rebuilding efforts and receives aid from nearby Iran.
Even the Sunni Arabs, some of whom fell under the Islamic State’s sway, would be able to count on some support from wealthy Gulf countries.
However, the Christians — and the Yazidis — will be on their own, Warda said, unless foreign donors step up to the plate.
Already, Hungary and Poland have contributed to the cause, and the community now has high hopes that Trump’s administration will help out.
“You are not just helping them because they are Christians, but because they have been persecuted and left behind,” he said.
Warda’s trip to Washington is not just to tout a collection plate: He is to argue that working with his network is a sound investment.
Haley and Pence have made clear that they have concerns about the efficiency of US-led efforts, but the church is hard at work.
About 4,000 families have returned to rebuild the town they call Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest mainly Christian community, Warda said.
However, smaller villages on what is now the frontline between the forces of the Baghdad government and the Kurdish militia are at greater risk.
One village, where 60 homes had been rebuilt, was abandoned a second time when these forces, once allies against the IS, clashed.
In another, the town of Telekuf-Tesqopa, or Tel Eskof, 900 recently returned families live with their bags packed in case trouble flares again.
However, there again, Warda sees hope that with support, the church — however marginal it is in strategic terms — can help Iraq.
The Baghdad-born cleric is now based in Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, and is contact with churchmen in the Iraqi capital, too.
On at least one occasion, when tempers frayed between Baghdad-aligned forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga, Christians have sought to cool tensions.
“So that was because of the church,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including