We must help to bring hope to the people left suffering in Iraq
Clwyd West Assembly Member Darren Millar says his recent trip to northern Iraq showed him that there is still hope for the Middle East...
IS THERE any hope? I first got involved with the campaign for Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq in 2017, when I held an event at the Senedd with the anti-persecution charity Open Doors.
I was greatly encouraged to see a large number of Assembly colleagues from across the party spectrum in attendance, but I couldn’t help but feel that I needed to do more than just raise awareness, so in September this year I travelled to northern Iraq to find out what more could be done.
In 1910, Christians made up 6.3% of Iraq’s population, but this had fallen to just 1.4% by 2010. Today, Open Doors estimates that just 200,000 Christians remain, half the number left in the country at the time of Saddam Hussain’s fall.
As I embarked on my journey, I wondered what I was going to see. Was there any chance I would return with a story of hope?
Iraq has suffered greatly. All Iraqis suffered under Saddam. But when Saddam was deposed in 2003, a vacuum was created which terrorists quickly filled. Muslim extremists, Daesh, filled this vacuum with terror and a religiously-based ideology which left minorities such as Christians and Yazidis with three options. Pay up, get out, or be killed.
By 2014 Daesh had gathered strong support and looked like an unstoppable force. They rolled into Iraqi cities and towns, and the army fled. Daesh ruled communities with an iron fist – and bit by bit they built their so called caliphate on the back of stolen oil revenues and the possessions of those they consider infidels.
Despite all of this, Open Doors promised that I would experience another story on my trip to Iraq – a story of hope.
Upon arrival in Iraq I was astounded by its beauty. Far from the dry desert images on our TV screens, northern Iraq’s Nineveh Plain is an expanse of arable land nourished by the waters of the River Tigris. It is easy to see why this land, known as the Fertile Crescent, became the cradle of civilisation and saw the rise and fall of empires.
Erbil, our base for the duration of the visit and capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, was also more developed and better planned than I had been anticipating.
During our stay we travelled out of Erbil to the small mountain town of Alqosh. Fortunately for the people of Alqosh, Daesh didn’t reach them, but a large number of less fortunate Christians from the Nineveh Plains sought refuge in the town after they were driven from their homes by murderous extremists between 2014-16.
Soon after their arrival in Alqosh it became evident to Church leaders there that providing for the physical needs of these people simply wasn’t enough; they needed trauma and mental health support too.
The barbaric actions of Daesh had left their mark, especially on the children and women – and so the Church stepped in to provide trauma care, therapy and counselling. Through the support of Open Doors and their partners, the Church has been able to train Iraqi Christians to deliver these needs. Developing their programmes over time, they have now provided trauma care for a wide range of people both from the Christian and Yazidi communities.
The care was not only giving people resilience to cope with the past and present, it was also helping to give the Iraqi Christian community stability, dignity and hope for the future. Prioritising the mental health care of the children in particular will surely help to create a generation that can move on from the past and give them an ability to contribute to an Iraq which is reconciled to its past and can build a peaceful future.
On the last day of the trip I met a remarkable woman who works with Christian women in different parts of Iraq. She told me that she had lived in various countries in the Middle East but had asked God to send her to the most dangerous place on Earth; he led her to Iraq. She relayed her story with an infectious joy and told me how she helps the women to think about what has happened and how they can try to rebuild their lives.
As she finished telling me about her work, she spoke about her experience in the region over the past 30 years.
She had lived in Lebanon when the war broke out and many people left, but when the war ended and Lebanon began to be rebuilt, people slowly started to come back.
She gave me the confidence that if we work to rebuild Iraq, the lives of the people will also be rebuilt and those who have left will come back, while those who remain will flourish.
This woman, and others like her, brings hope to every person she meets. And she gave me hope that Iraq can be rebuilt, and that we need to play our part in the rebuilding.
We need to remind those with influence, including the UK Government, that we have a responsibility towards Iraq. Its plight cannot be forgotten amid the many other humanitarian crises that are ongoing in our world today.
To ignore what goes on there brings the risk of a resurgence of violence in the future. But with appropriate support, vulnerable religious minorities can thrive and play their part in rebuilding and returning to their nation.
The UK Government must do more to promote human rights and religious freedom in Iraq, invest in economic development and infrastructure, and help in the fight against corruption.
The Welsh Government could consider releasing human resources and talent from our NHS to serve in trauma centres there. And we must play our part, raising awareness, calling for action, and releasing our resources to support organisations like Open Doors and others who are helping to bring hope to the Middle East.
The UK Government must do more to promote human rights and religious freedom in Iraq DARREN MILLAR