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Iraqi Christians Under Siege, Flee In Large Numbers |
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Iraq's last official census (1987) counted 1.4 million indigenous Assyrian and Chaldean Christians. As Islamic zeal and Arab nationalism rose in the wake of Gulf War 1 (1991), Christians with means emigrated. By the time of the March 2003 US invasion, the Christian population of Iraq was estimated at between 1.2 million and 800,000. Sectarian conflict and ethnic-religious cleansing, a remnant of some 400,000 Christians remains. The Shi'ite south has been virtually 'cleansed' of Christians and few remain in the Sunni-dominated centre. Christians now live mostly in the north: in the historic Assyrian homeland of the Nineveh Plains, a fault-line region between the Arabs (who invaded up from Arabia in the 7th Century) and the Kurds (who invaded down from Turkey in the 14th Century). Terrorism targeting Mosul's churches and Christians has escalated ever since the US 'surge' forced al-Qaeda elements out of the central provinces of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala to relocate north. Christian families continue to flee Mosul in large numbers. Those still there report being intimidated and harassed with threatening phone calls and letters. Many Christian women have taken to wearing the hijab to hide their Christian identity. Christians are so endangered in Northern Iraq that Christian students must travel to university in convoys with Iraqi military escorts. On Sunday morning 2 May two bombs ripped through a convoy of buses transporting Christian college students from the mainly Christian town of Hamdaniya, 40km east of Mosul in the Nineveh Plains region of Northern Iraq, to the University of Mosul. (ANS/CT-6/5/10) |
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Monsy Abraham |