08773
October 20, 2008
U.S. visitors hear Iraqi Christians’ pleas
Half of Christians in Mosul reportedly have fled the country in face of violence
by Peggy Thomson
Special to Presbyterian News Service
ALEPPO, SYRIA — Alfan Ghanim had heard that the Americans were coming and she wanted to be ready to state her case.
Since fleeing Iraq nearly two years ago for Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, Ghanim has been clinging desperately to her dream of emigrating to the United States with her husband and two young sons.
After hearing that a group of American Presbyterians was coming to visit the National Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church of Aleppo, where she and her family frequently worship, Ghanim arrived at the church, too, armed with copies of various documents relating to her family’s dire situation.
The Americans Ghanim was hoping to meet were members of various Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations who arrived in the Syrian capital Damascus on Oct. 4 to participate in a three-day “encounter and consultation” with a delegation of church leaders from the five Presbyterian churches in Iraq.
At the end of the unprecedented gathering, at least a dozen members of the 22-member American delegation traveled on to various other towns and cities in central and northern Syria, where they met with local Presbyterians and visited a number of Evangelical (Presbyterian) churches and schools.
Aleppo is a poor and dusty place, and American visitors are a novelty. Still, despite looking decidedly out of place on the streets of Aleppo, the American Presbyterians arrived at the church bright and early Oct. 12, completely unaware of the unscheduled “encounter” with the Iraqi Christian refugees that was about to take place.
Shortly before the worship service began some 40 to 50 Iraqi refugees filled the pews, immediately doubling the number of regular worshippers. One Iraqi woman, who was already weeping, immediately approached PC(USA) General Assembly Council staffer Amgad Beblawi, who was with the American group, and said through her tears, “We are respectable people and look at what has happened to us.”
Following the service, the local church members and their American guests gathered, the way congregations do the world over, for coffee and tea in the church’s modest, stone-walled fellowship hall. As the Americans were preparing to leave, however, the Iraqis repeated their request to be allowed to tell their stories.
As soon as the two groups returned to the sanctuary a highly charged atmosphere of desperation filled the air. On the Iraqi side at least, it appeared that everyone wanted to speak at once. Acting as an unofficial spokesman, a middle-aged man took control of the microphone.
“It was difficult during Saddam’s time,” he said, “but at least we had dignity and honor.” Like most of the Iraqis attending the church, the man asked that his name not be used out of fear of reprisals.
“Saddam contained tensions,” he continued, “but then following the invasion, these tensions began to surface, especially after the (Iraqi) government was dismantled.” Shaking his head sadly, the man added, “The small rights we once had are now gone.”
For the Americans the impromptu meeting was more unsettling than any of the sessions earlier in the week with the Iraqi church leaders, who were uniformly restrained when it came to displays of raw emotion.
After the Aleppo meeting, as the group was preparing to leave Syria, Dora McComa of Great Falls, MT, said she had been taken aback by the encounter with the Iraqi refugees in Aleppo. “I hadn’t expected anything like that at all,” she said.
The Rev. Raafat Zaki of Atlanta said that clearly the Iraqi refugees need counseling to help them cope with their predicament. He also said that the Syrian church and its pastor, the Rev. Ibrahim Nisir, appeared “overwhelmed and drained” by the presence of the refugees.
Alfan Ghanim’s story was only one of many. Another was told by a 67-year-old woman with a daughter in Germany who said she couldn’t understand why her visa application had been refused at least three times by the German authorities. Yet another woman, who said she was a 30-year-old architect, told the Americans that she had left Iraq because she felt that she either had to flee or convert to Islam.
“Is it that bad that we are Christians?” she cried.
Abeer from Mosul said that in the past she had always had Muslim friends and that there had never been any trouble between the Christian and Muslim neighborhoods. “But now,” she told the group, “I fear for my life.”
Abeer and some of the other Iraqis were harshly critical of the behavior of the American troops that patrolled her former neighborhood.
“They are obsessed with checking women’s clothing,” she said, “and doing things like going into homes in the middle of the night.”
Alfan Ghanim had brought with her a document from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees confirming her status as a refugee as well as a letter from her supervisor praising her work as a translator for the American forces and recommending that she and her family be allowed to emigrate to the United States.
Ghanim said she began working for the American military after Islamic militias told her she had to wear the hijab, the traditional Islamic dress for women, or leave her job as a pharmacist. She left, she said, but soon discovered that her new job with the American military may have been putting her life and those of her two young sons at risk. After one son was injured by an improvised explosive device (IED) in what Ghanim felt was a deliberate attack, the family fled the troubled city of Mosul for Syria.
Hassan Jibrail Boulos told the Americans that at one time he had held an important position in Iraq, but that since coming to Aleppo two years ago he and his family have been forced to endure almost unbearable living conditions.
“We are living eight of us in a two-bedroom apartment,” Boulos said.
Like many other Iraqi refugees, Boulos said he is being forced to use his life savings to pay the rent on the family’s tiny apartment and that as a result money for basic necessities is fast becoming an urgent problem.
“The problem is that they (the Iraqis) are looking to live here the same way they did in Iraq,” Nisir said. “They cannot expect to be able to do this.”
The same day the Americans met with the Iraqis in Aleppo, two Christian homes were bombed in Mosul, killing five and prompting yet another wave of Christians refugees.
According to the Rev. Nuhad Tomeh, the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq, less than 48 hours after the attacks five more Christian families had arrived in Aleppo “with only the clothes on their backs.”
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Friday that Iraqi government officials estimate that nearly 10,000 people, or half the Christians in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul have fled in the past week.
The majority of the refugees, Tomeh noted, are staying in homes, monasteries and churches in Bartela and Karakoush and other Christian villages northeast of Mosul in the Ninevah Plain, although a number may eventually end up either going to Syria or possibly leaving for any other country that will accept them.
Approximately 1.25 million Iraqis have taken refuge in Syria while another 75,000 have fled to neighboring Lebanon. Of the Iraqi refugees in Syria, some 40,000 are Christians. In Lebanon the number of Iraqi Christian refugees is said to total approximately 10,000.
Tomeh, who is in frequent contact with the MECC’s Baghdad office, believes the Iraqi authorities are fully aware of the gravity of the Christians’ plight and are making a concerted effort to restore law and order.
“The Iraqi police and army are taking the situation very seriously,” Tomeh said, “and are working very hard to find the perpetrators.” But many Iraqi Christians are not convinced, insisting that their government is covering up the extent of the persecution while also giving false assurances that security has indeed been improved. In any case, none of the Iraqi Christians at the Aleppo church expressed any hope of the situation ever becoming secure enough for them to return to Iraq.
Following the emotional encounter in Aleppo, Tomeh, who was accompanying the Americans on their trip around Syria, said that in the past the Iraqi Christian refugees in Aleppo have insisted that they no longer wish to meet with groups from the U.S. because of what they view as the Americans’ inability or unwillingness to help them.
Nevertheless, despite this bitter vow, on this particular Sunday the Iraqis came, clutching either official papers or, in most cases, little more than an invisible strand of hope.
Many of the Iraqis at the church in Aleppo said that they believe the attacks are being perpetrated by radical Islamic or Kurdish groups intent on driving the Christians out of the Mosul area and even out of Iraq altogether. They had been closely following news of the most recent attacks, which began in late September on the east side of Mosul, and which have resulted in several thousands Iraqi Christians becoming homeless literally overnight.
The Americans listened sympathetically, and several offered to take the copies of the Iraqis’ documents or to make phone calls or write letters on their behalf once they returned home. Still, many of the Americans said later that they felt powerless when it came to doing anything truly constructive.
The Rev. Len Bjorkman, a retired Presbyterian minister with the American group, said the situation reminded him of the early days of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, becoming both internal and external refuges.
“The Iraqis are in denial,” Bjorkman said. “But then this is what grief is all about.”
The National Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church in Damascus is also bracing for a similar influx of Iraqi refugees. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Boutros Zaour, said Oct. 13 that he was certain his church would soon be feeling the effects of the recent violence against Christians in Mosul.
“Whenever there is pressure in Iraq that makes for more refugees in Syria,” Zaour said.
The Damascus church is already serving at least 35 families from Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, Zaour said, adding that in many cases the refugees are clearly suffering from depression and other psychological problems. Zaour was quick to concede that the Iraqi Christian refugees are stretching the church’s limited financial resources to the breaking point.
“We are a self-supporting church,” Zaour said, “which means there is only so much we can do.”
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