For liberated Iraqi Christians, still a bleak Christmas
DESPITE their hometowns having been recently freed from the Islamic State, the Christians of Iraq are still in a state of mourning as Christmas approaches.
Old towns on the edge of Mosul, where Christians lived for centuries, have become wastelands. Most churches are standing, but damaged and ransacked. When a liberating soldier hoists a cross atop a church, or a priest returns to take stock of the losses and light a candle, the scenes feel more sad than hopeful.
Some of the early gains in the campaign to retake Mosul from IS, which is grinding into its third month, were the liberations of historically Christian villages and towns, including Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian city, and Bartella.
There were early feelings of jubilation. Some families returned to celebrate alongside some of the Christian militia fighters who participated in the battles. But just as quickly it became apparent that rebirth for the Christian community in Iraq is unlikely, given how few seem to want to return.
“There is no guarantee that we can go back and be safe,” said Haseeb Saleem, 65, a Christian from the Mosul area who left more than two years ago and now lives in the Kurdish city of Irbil, the regional capital.
Saleem echoed a deeply felt belief among Iraq’s minorities that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, by removing a dictatorship that at least promised them security, marked the beginning of the community’s demise in their own country.
“Before 2003, believe me, my neighbor didn’t know what I was,” he said. “No one could ask, are you Sunni? Or Shia? Or Muslim? Or Christian?”
In 2003, an estimated 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq. By the time the IS swept through in 2014, that figure had fallen to roughly 400,000.
Since then, many thousands more have left. There, in Irbil, Christians are clustered in the neighbourhood of Ainkawa, and many of the displaced were taken in by local churches. The neighbourhood is the last centre of a vibrant Christian culture in Iraq; shops these days are filled with Christmas decorations, and it is always easy to find wine or pork.
When IS seized Mosul and outlying areas in the summer of 2014, the militants stole the money, jewellery and property of Christians, and gave them a choice if they wished to stay: Either convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Nearly every Christian left home.
But there were two Christians, women in their late 70s, who stayed. Cut off from their families during the chaos of two summers ago, Badrea Gigues and Zarifa Bakoos found themselves left behind in Qaraqosh. Then, each had an ailing husband.
But soon after their hometown fell to the Islamic State, their husbands died. The two widows, old friends, found themselves living together, and facing together the brutality of new rulers who stole their money and demanded they renounce their faith.
“Sometimes we prayed, and sometimes we cried,” said Gigues, who is blind and largely deaf, in a recent interview. “We talked about our husbands, our memories, our children, what it was like when we were young.”
The women said that IS fighters had forced them to spit on a cross and to stomp on a picture of the Virgin Mary.
“Sorry, Mary, that I did that,” Bakoos recalled thinking. “Please forgive me.”
Even for former residents of Qaraqosh who might wish to return and stay, it is not yet safe. Rubble and destruction are everywhere. Christian militia fighters who secured the town are still on alert for possible counterattacks.
The Christians of Iraq may have lost much to the Islamic State houses, gold, money. But some say the experience has strengthened their faith.
“They can destroy our houses, our things, but not our souls,” said Huda Khudhur, a nun from Qaraqosh.