‘Symbol of victory’ for Christians
Two priests tell of their joy as they return to Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town, and ‘rebuild’ its church, writes Foreign Correspondent Florian Neuhof
QARAQOSH // Among the rugged war machines roaring through the arid plains of Nineveh province towards the front is a white SUV. In the car sit two priests, dressed all in black and wearing clerical collars, and a few men clad in army fatigues, clutching old Kalashnikovs. They are on their way to Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town, where the Iraqi army is fighting to expel the last ISIL fighters, and they are in a hurry.
With the operation to liberate Mosul, ISIL’s last base in Iraq, well under way, the areas surrounding the northern city are slowly being reclaimed by the army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. Among them is Qaraqosh, whose 50,000 inhabitants fled to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region when the extremists seized the town in August 2014.
Qaraqosh has not been fully secured yet. Sniper fire and mortar rounds continue to harass the Iraqi soldiers. Suicide car bombers remain a threat.
But this has not deterred Father Amar and Fr Majid from returning to their hometown. After navigating the gently rolling plains, the convoy reaches the town’s fringes, passing tanks and Humvees of the 9th Armoured Division, and pulls up next to an abandoned hospital.
ISIL has ransacked the building, taking all of its surgical equipment and even stripping the computers of their memory chips. Part of the complex has been destroyed by a fire and a discarded police uniform lies at the entrance of the guard room, suggesting a tale of panicked escape as the militants closed in.
The priests are visibly shocked by the destruction around them.
“This hospital served the people from more than 50 villages,” says Fr Amar. “Hundreds of people came here every day. Now you can see what happened.”
The convoy continues, rolling past facades scarred by bullet holes and punctured by tank shells. On the broad road leading into town, an engine block and mangled car frame lie not far from the shattered hull of a Humvee. According to Iraqi high command, ISIL has already launched well over a hundred car bombs at the Iraqi and Kurdish forces in its desperate defence of Mosul. Some of them detonated in Qaraqosh where 18 soldiers have been killed in the fighting and about 80 wounded, according to Major Mohammed, head of the field hospital behind the front line.
To the left is the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the biggest church in Qaraqosh, drawing 3,000 people for Sunday mass before ISIL came to town, according to Fr Amar.
The extremists seem to have delighted in desecrating the holy site: wooden pews have been tossed over, the mezzanine floor housing the organ has been torched, and the altar and interior walls are charred. ISIL graffiti is scrawled on the columns supporting the cental part of the building known as the nave.
“It is a big shock to see it this destroyed. I cried,” Fr Amar says after taking in some of the damage.
In the walled courtyard behind the church stand mannequins set up by ISIL for target practice. The walls on all four sides have been sprayed with bullets. Spent cartridges litter the floor.
The insurgents used the church to store weapons and ammunition, says Major Fuad Jassem of the 9th Division.
“They knew that the coalition would not bomb a site of such spiritual importance,” he adds, sitting in a command vehicle that co-ordinates the movement of the troops in the city.
After entering the church the priests spend little time surveying the building’s interior. Instead they race with their armed entourage up a stairway towards the roof. They emerge near the elegant belfry, which has been hit by a tank shell. The bell is missing, ripped from its chain. The two men climb from the flat roof above the church aisle on to the arched roof covering the nave. One brings a wooden cross made from two pieces of plywood strung together with wire, and they begin to pile up stones from the damaged belfry to build a makeshift base.
Gunfire erupts nearby, and a few mortar rounds land not far from the church, but the men barely notice as they immerse themselves in their work.
Soon the cross stands erect. Elated, the priests break into song, singing a hymn in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago and still spoken today by the Assyrians of Iraq, who make up the majority of the country’s Christians. The armed men, who belong to a Christian militia that has been supporting the Iraqi army’s push into Qaraqosh, join in the singing.
“This cross is a symbol of victory for us, and for all Christians in Iraq,” says Fr Majid, standing in the church’s blackened interior after descending from the roof.
As he speaks, the militiamen light candles and place them on the altar. The priests approach the altar and once again begin to sing, performing the first Christian rite in Qaraqosh since ISIL chased the community from its homes more than two years ago. Outside, the war goes on.
‘ This cross is a symbol of victory for us, and for all Christians in Iraq Father Majid Christian priest