In Iraq, ISIS Is Gone, but Christians Remain Forgotten

Ten years ago, in the days following Aug. 6-7, 2014, the city of Erbil in northern Iraq became one of the largest concentrations of internally displaced people on earth. Driven eastward across the Nineveh Plains by ISIS terror, nearly 1 million Iraqis of all faiths found themselves fleeing for their lives through the blazing heat of the Iraqi summer.

Included among the violently displaced that summer were nearly 150,000 Iraqi Christians from some of the world’s most ancient Christian communities. Many of them ended up in the diocese where I am pastor.

I wish I could tell you that, after the subdual of ISIS in Iraq five years ago, the nation’s Christian community is now in full recovery with a peaceful and prosperous future on the horizon. But the truth is something quite different.

We Christians are today the collateral damage of a foreign-policy venture from abroad that began in 2003 and continued through a premature and politically driven withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces in 2011. Along with our brothers and sisters from other faiths, we saw our country invaded, ripped apart and then left open to the horror of ISIS.

Now largely abandoned as a hollow shell, no longer a country in any meaningful sense, Iraq is merely a place on the map where foreign powers fight out their designs through proxies. In this debris of a civilization, the Christians of Iraq are on the verge of disappearing from history.

Optimistically, the remaining Christian population is considered to be fewer than 250,000, down from as many as 1.3 million before 2003. Realistically, the Christian population is likely far lower than 250,000, and our future daily becomes closer to that of a museum people, dwindling caretakers of what remains of our ancient towns and sacred places.

None of this is for lack of trying. We have sought with often-heroic efforts to build schools, hospitals and even a new university, providing the kinds of service to all that have marked the best tradition of the Catholic Church throughout history. Wherever possible we have sought help from the West and in many instances have been blessed to receive timely support, which has allowed us to hold on for another month, another year.

And yet, in the miserable dysfunction of Iraq today, we are disappearing. Deeply ingrained, religiously motivated persecution against our people continues at the everyday level despite the stated concerns of leaders. Our once-thriving entrepreneur class finds its businesses extorted and its profits stolen. Our diligently crafted proposals for international assistance to our hospitals and schools are now routinely set aside, not because of failures at these institutions, but simply because the eyes of the world have moved on. We find ourselves increasingly in the world’s rearview mirror, and quite soon we will be out of sight — permanently.

And while there are others in Iraq who are numerically “minorities,” none of them — except our friends the Yazidis, who have suffered these past years along with us — are in any danger of becoming extinct. Still, with meaningful, sustained solidarity and support, there is time to change this course.

Read more at National Catholic Register