Peshmerga forces place a cross on top of a Christian church in the town of Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, Nov. 10, 2016. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)
ishtartv.com - kurdistan24.net
Laurie
Mylroie, 28-10-2017
WASHINGTON
DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Promoting religious freedom and protecting
persecuted Christians and other religious minorities is a vital element in the
Trump administration’s national security agenda.
On
Wednesday, Vice-President Mike Pence addressed the annual conference of the
association In Defense of Christians (IDC), which focuses on the plight of threatened
Christian communities in the Middle East.
“In
Iraq, we see monasteries demolished, priests and monks beheaded, the
two-millennia-old Christian tradition in Mosul clinging for survival,” Pence
told the IDC.
“In
Iraq, the followers of Christ have fallen by 80 percent in the past decade and
a half,” the Vice-President warned. “Across the wider Middle East, we can now
see a future in many areas without the Christian faith.”
The
next day, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert praised the Kurds in
strong terms for their role in protecting Christians and other minorities in
Iraq.
“Without
the Kurds, many of those families would eventually not be able to come home,”
she said, responding to a question from Kurdistan 24.
“The
Kurds were a huge part” of the fight against the Islamic State (IS), alongside
Coalition and US forces, she said, helping “to protect those persecuted
communities.”
“We
will never forget what the Kurds have done,” she concluded.
Loay
Mikhael heads the Foreign Relations Committee of The Chaldean Syriac Assyrian
Popular Council, a political party representing Iraqi Christians.
On
Friday, Mikhael explained to Kurdistan 24 that 90 percent of Iraq’s Christians
now live in the Kurdistan Region.
There
had been Christian communities in the south of Iraq, including in Baghdad and
Basra, prior to 2003. But conflict in the Arab areas of the country following
the US-led war, generated an ever-increasing persecution of Christians, and
almost all of them have now relocated to the Kurdistan Region, if they have not
left Iraq altogether.
On
October 16, Iraqi forces, in combination with Iranian-backed Shi’a militias,
known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), attacked Kirkuk, in an
operation orchestrated by Qassim Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, the
paramilitary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC.)
Further
assaults from Iraqi Forces and the PMF followed the initial attack.
“We
saw tanks, we saw Humvees, coming in with Iranian flags, with Imam Ali and
Hussein flags, and under them Iraqi flags,” Mikhael said.
“They
burned houses, they killed people, they kidnapped people, and they tried to
displace others.”
“Christians
have fled again from the Nineveh Plain, when the attack happened in Telskuf two
days ago,” Mikhail explained. “They fled again to al Qush,” where Kurdish
forces “have a presence.”
Notably,
the displaced Christians did not seek refuge in the areas controlled by Iraqi
forces and Shiite militias, Mikhael said, but with the Kurds.
Just
three days before the assault on Kirkuk, President Donald Trump had announced,
“I am authorizing the Treasury Department to further sanction the entire [IRGC]
for its support for terrorism and to apply sanctions to its officials, agents,
and affiliates.”
But
when the attack on Kirkuk occurred, in an operation orchestrated by a senior
IRGC commander, in which IRGC proxies played a crucial role, the Trump
administration turned a blind eye. It did nothing to halt the attack on the
Kurds.
It
is very difficult to understand how the Trump administration’s studied
neutrality between a force that persecutes Christians and one that protects them
is consistent with any serious commitment to protect this endangered minority
in that part of the world.
|