‘Christians will all have left Iraq in 5 years’

WHEN members of Father Martin Hermis Dawood’s congregation used to ask guidance about fleeing Iraq, his advice was to be strong.

Iraq’s Christian’s had to stay together and hope, he would counsel, no matter how bleak the situation may look.

Yet, the dramatic arrival two years ago of Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) extremists forced him to change his guidance. “I tell them one thing. If you are thinking about leaving, go now, do not wait,” the 41-year-old Assyrian priest told The Daily Telegraph.

For many in Iraq’s ancient and beleaguered churches, the rise of Isil and its seizure of territory where Christians have worshipped for two millennia, has ended years of equivocation.

A gradual decline in Iraq’s Christians dating back decades has accelerated into an exodus that the priest believes will effectively end the Christian presence in his country. “They have lost their hope of staying. In five years, you will see only a few who are unable to leave, maybe a few priests,” he said.

Christian leaders in Iraq estimate the population of Chaldean Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, and members of the eastern Assyrian church and others has dropped from 1.3 million people 20 years ago, to fewer than 400,000. In the past two years, the rise of Isil has displaced more than 200,000 Christians from the northern region of Nineveh.

Many are now in refugee camps in Baghdad, like the one where Fr Dawood ministers to 150-odd families.

They feel caught in a confrontation between Islamic extremism and the West, he said. “We are in the middle. When newspapers published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, it was in Europe, but gangs tried to assault Christians here. [If ] something happened in Belgium or in Holland, I paid here.

“There’s a struggle happening in the whole world and we will be burned in this fire in the future.”