They Kill Christians (Too)

The attack on the Sayyidat al-Najat (Our Lady of Salvation) Church in the al-Karradah district in Baghdad on October 31st was not the first on churches in Iraq in recent years. However, it’s certainly the most lethal in terms of casualties, let alone its deleterious effects on Iraq’s already damaged social space. The Islamic State of Iraq, some of whose members stormed the church and took the congregation hostage and killed some of them before being attacked in turn by government troops, is now threatening more attacks on Christians unless the Coptic Church in Egypt releases two captive women who've converted to Islam they are supposedly holding. The attack left 58 corpses. This event will probably come to epitomize the tragedy of Iraq's Christians and the fragility of their situation. Since 2004, more than sixty churches have been attacked all over Iraq. About 2,000 Christians have been murdered and almost half a million have fled the country. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have been forced to leave their homes and are internally displaced inside Iraq.

While Iraqi Christians are not the only targets of this sectarian violence (Mendaeans and Yazidis amongst the non-Muslims, for example) and of course hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shi`is have also been the victims of violence and have had their mosques and shrines attacked, the plight of Christians and other non-Muslims always receives disproportionate attention in the west. Genuine concern for the plight of others notwithstanding, the tradition of official “concern” for minorities in the Middle East, especially Christians, has been used as a pretext for intervention and a tool to gain geopolitical influence and power. On the popular level it reinforces orientalist stereotypes of the Islamic world and its societies as ultimately inhospitable and naturally intolerant of others, and consequently the colonial fantasy of the west as an automatic guardian of threatened minorities over “there.” 

Christian communities in Iraq are among the oldest in the world and trace their presence back to the early centuries of Christianity. Tracing that history is beyond the scope and the space of this essay, but it wouldn’t be too exorbitant to say that, notwithstanding occasional tensions and frictions, on the whole, the lot of Christians in Iraq in pre-modern times belies any narratives of consistent and transhistorical oppression by Muslims or Muslim rulers. Throughout the pre-modern period there was discrimination and certain privileges were not fully accorded minorities, including Christians, but suffice it to say that the presence and welfare of Christians in Iraq was never threatened en masse until recent years.

One might object by citing the notorious massacre of Assyrians at the hands of the nascent Iraqi state in August of 1933 in which three thousand Assyrians were killed by troops led by Bakr Sidqi. But that terrible and reprehensible event is better understood in nationalist, rather than religious terms. Not unlike many other groups in the region, the Assyrians had nationalist aspirations and were initially cynically encouraged by the British to pursue them. They were also recruited to serve, among others, in the Levies, the military forces established by Britain in Iraq in 1915. Later, however, the Levies consisted predominantly (and in 1928, exclusively) of Assyrian personnel and the 1922 treaty between Iraq and Great Britain considered them local forces of the imperial garrison and members of the British forces.” Following Iraq’s independence, the Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Eshai Shamoun sought British support for Assyrian autonomy in Iraq and presented his case before the League of Nations in 1932. The Levies planned to resign and regroup as a militia. The Patriarch was invited to Baghdad for negotiations, but was detained and then exiled for refusing to relinquish his authority. None of this is revisted to excuse or justify the Iraqi state’s violence, but to remind us of the political and historical context. Assyrian nationalist aspirations have grown even stronger since then, especially in the diaspora where lobbying for “safe havens” is afoot, particularly in light of the violence against Assyrians and other Christians in recent years in Iraqi Kurdistan and elsewhere in Iraq (including Baghdad). This could be disastrous for those Christians living throughout Iraq as it will only further complicate their situation and encourage those who have made it a goal to displace them. There are also efforts to subsume all Christian denominations in Iraq under the nationalist Assyrian umbrella. Right after the attack on the Sayyidat al-Najat church, the Assyrian International News Agency released a news report whose headline was “Twenty Five Catholic Assyrians Killed as Baghdad Hostage Drama Ends in Blood Bath.” Thus appropriating the killing of non-Assyrian Christians who don’t necessarily share its nationalist platform for its own political agenda. 

Assyrians notwithstanding, Iraq’s other Christians, including the Chaldeans, did not identify as a political or national group with nationalist aspirations, not until 2003. Therefore, it is important to understand the history of what nowadays have become the dominant and acceptable categories through which all Iraqis are seen and (mis)understood. This is to say that while ethnicity and religious affiliation were important factors and played a role in how Iraqi Christians viewed themselves at various moments in the 20th century, class and ideology were even more crucial. While definitely a minority, Iraqi Christians, like other Iraqis, were active participants in the making of modern Iraq. The founder of the Iraqi Communist Party, Yusif Salman Yusif (1901-1949) and its first secretary was a Chaldean Christian. In more recent decades, the most powerful and perhaps infamous Iraqi Christian was Tariq Aziz, who was minister of culture and later Foreign minister and one of Saddam Hussein’s trusted advisers who was tried and sentenced to death last month by the current regime in Iraq (Azizi’s case garnered much more attention and calls for clemency were issued, because he is Christian, as if Christians cannot be ruthless or potentially guilty of the crimes Aziz was accused of). There are numerous examples of others from various fields. The point is that Iraqi Christians had no major anxieties about their belonging and Iraqiness and they had access to the various institutions and services. Practicing their religion was a right they enjoyed. This does not mean there were no tensions or discrimination, but it was never institutionalized or official. While ruthless to its political enemies and potential opponents, be they individuals or groups, the last Ba`th regime (1968-2003), especially under Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) exhibited no negative attitudes towards Christians qua Christians. Perhaps the single most important development, aside from this last war, that would irrevocably change the lives and future of all Iraqis was the 1991 Gulf War and the lethal economic sanctions imposed after it. The destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure and the collapse of its economy drove hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, especially the middle class and most Christians in Baghdad are of that class, to seek life elsewhere. Thus, in the 1990’s many Iraqi Christians began to leave and try to settle in the diaspora. In addition to the severe economic hardship and the erosion of the social fabric, this drove more Iraqis back to their faith. The previously secular regime started to play the faith card by starting its own “Faith Campaign” in its last few years to crack down on moral corruption by closing down bars and nightclubs (some of which were owned by Christians). This was another blow to a society that had been strongly secular for much of the 20th century.

The invasion of 2003 and the dismantling of the Iraqi state and its institutions dealt a severe blow to Iraqi Christians. The political regime the US installed atop the rubble of the state it dismantled complicated already existing tensions among various groups. The most significant factor is the discursive transformation of ethnic and religious identities into political ones and institutionalizing them as such by constructing a quota-based political system in which sect and ethnicity are the only circulating currency. It forced most Iraqis to fall back to their primordial identities. Thus Christians became Christians first and foremost, as did other groups. When we were filming the documentary About Baghdad in July of 2003, I met a bookseller at the famous al-Mutanabbi Street in old Baghdad. He spoke admiringly of Gramsci and Marx, but then asked us if we would visit and film the headquarters of their new “Christian Chaldean Party.” I expressed my surprise that a Marxist-sounding intellectual would found such a blatantly ethno-sectarian party. “What can we do? That’s the only way to get into the new system and be represented. There is no other way,” he said. More viscerally, the dismantling of the police and army and the institutionalization of militia culture left the great majority of Iraqis defenseless. In the mayhem and chaos that followed and led to the civil war, Christians, without a militia of their own or a party representing them, were even more vulnerable targets for kidnapping and murder. The lack of security and safety and the chaos unleashed the violence of various terrorist groups that targeted churches and priests. Thousands of Christians were displaced within Baghdad and many thousands sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, especially during and after the civil war and the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad’s neighborhoods. Christians, including clergymen, are still being attacked and murdered in Mosul and elsewhere, prompting demonstrations in Baghdad and Mosul demanding justice and an inquiry.

In the 1950’s, it was estimated that Iraq’s Christians were 6% of the population. The tumultuous years of dictatorship, wars and sanctions drove many abroad, bringing their percentage down to 3% (750,000) on the eve of the 2003 invasion. Now their numbers have dwindled even further. It was not my choice to be born into an Iraqi Christian family, but even as a secular atheist, I must say that it is sad to have to contemplate the notion of a day when Iraqi Christians could become a relic of the past in Iraq. Throughout the 20^th century no church was ever attacked in Baghdad. It was inconceivable that members of a congregation would be held hostage and executed on a Sunday while praying or celebrating. The Iraqi regime called its operation to storm the Sayyidat al-Najat church and “save” the hostages “Tahrir” (liberation). I couldn’t help but think of the notion of “lethal liberation” carried out in 2003 and still ongoing.

In a long history of occasional tensions and various upheavals, the presence of Iraqi Christians in Iraq was never threatened, but now it is. Instead of “only in America,” one is forced to write: only America and its Iraqi puppet regime could achieve such a feat.