Father Emanuel Youkhana visited Mosul with a World Council of Churches delegation.Paul Jeffrey/WCC
ishtartv.com - christiantoday.com
By James Macintyre, 31
January 2017
An
Iraqi Christian leader and a senior academic have warned that Christians may
not return to Mosul for years to come, if at all, as some residents of the
war-torn city celebrate their new freedom from Islamic State.
Father
Emanuel Youkhana, a priest of the Assyrian Church of the East, spoke out after
visiting Mosul in a military convoy on January 27, the day Iraqi officials
raised the national flag over the eastern part of the city. "I don't see a
future for Christians in Mosul," he was reported as saying by Catholicphilly.com.
Fr
Youkhana talked to residents and soldiers and visited two heavily damaged
churches inside the city which was seized by ISIS in 2014, causing Christians
and other minorities to flee.
"The
churches were used as warehouses by Daesh," he said. "They used the
churches to store what they looted from Christian and Yezidi villages, but as
the end neared they sold the buildings to local contractors, who started
tearing down the walls to reuse the steel inside. If the army hadn't entered
for another couple of weeks, the buildings might have been completely
destroyed."
He
added: "Christians aren't going to come back to stay. The churches I saw
were not destroyed with bombs, but by the everyday business operations of the
community. How can Christians return to that environment? It's unfortunate,
because Mosul needs their skills. Most Christians were part of the intellectual
and professional class here, they were doctors and lawyers and engineers and
university professors. But I don't see how they can return."
Separately,
World
Watch Monitor reported similarly pessimistic comments by Charlie
Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Radicalisation
Studies at King's College, London.
Winter
said "there is no such thing as a post-IS world" and added that ISIS
had used propaganda "audaciously" to liken Mosul to the Saudi city of
Medina in the days of Mohammed who, in 622 AD left Mecca for Medina after
hearing of a plot to kill him.
Winter
said that ideological measures will be needed after military victory is
achieved. He warned that it is the Iraqi Government's responsibility to provide
for all its citizens and that unless this can be achieved stability will be
"many, many years" away.
Winter
was sharply critical of the pledge by the new US President Donald Trump to
"bomb the hell out of ISIS", suggesting that a mere focus on a
military response is "damaging" and displays a "foolish and
naive and superficial" understanding of the problems in the region.
The
Middle East Advocacy Coordinator for global charity Open Doors said: "Open
Doors believes that equal citizenship, dignity in different aspects of life and
enhanced and inclusive peace and reconciliation efforts – which give
faith-based organisations a leading role – are the key three elements for
achieving sustainable peace in Mosul and Nineveh."
Open
Doors has produced a detailed report on
the vital contribution that Christians make in Iraq (and Syria). The report's
coordinator, who declined to be named, said: "We need recognition for the
vital role of the Church in rebuilding and reconciliation... Maintaining the
presence of Christians is not only about them; it is for the good of society as
a whole. In the reports and research we've conducted, we have mapped, in a way,
all the contributions Christians have given to Iraq."
The
report states: "When Christianity spread across what we now call the
Middle East and we see that since then until now Christians have contributed to
societies in literacy, in health, in translating and contributing to the Arabic
language. Some of the best early centres of learning in the world were founded
by Christians. Christians were among the first to introduce charitable works
and NGOs. We see them involved in politics, and in the development of the Iraqi
state. Christians are among the most well-known business people. And in the
future Christians, alongside other numerical minorities, are vitally important
for the stability of [Iraq]. Policy-makers and researchers agree that we need
to maintain diversity in order to counter extremism and radicalisation. We need
diversity to ensure sustainable peace and lasting stability in the Middle
East."
|