Iraqs Refugee's: The Christians

The articles for this post aren't referred to in chronological order and it isn't necessary for that ordering for the point of this post.

"'Iraqi Christians already at home'"
by Ramzy Baroud, Nov. 10th, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=m71725

On October 31, when a group of militants seized a church in Baghdad, killing and wounding scores of Iraqi Christians, it signalled yet another episode of unimaginable horror in the country since the US invasion of March 2003.

Every group of Iraqis has faced terrible devastation as a result of this war, the magnitude of which is only now being discovered.

True, the situation in Iraq was difficult prior to the war. Having visited the country in 1999, I can testify to this. But the hardship suffered by many Iraqis, especially political dissenters, was in some way typical of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. Iraq could, at the time, be easily compared to other countries living similar hardships. But what has happened since the war can barely be compared to any other country or any other war since World War II. Even putting aside the devastating death toll, the sheer scale of internal displacement and forced emigration is terrifying.

This is a nation that had more or less maintained a consistent level of demographic cohesion for many generations. It was this cohesion that made Iraq what it was. Iraqi Christian communities coexisted with their Muslim neighbours for hundreds of years. The churches of the two main Christian groups, Assyrians and Chaldeans, date back to the years 33 and 34 AD, respectively.

(snip)

Today, merely half of Iraq’s Christians still live in the country, compared to the 1987 census which listed 1.4 million. The number is dwindling rapidly. The plight of Iraqi Christians is very similar to that of Palestinian Christians, whose numbers have plummeted and continue to fall following the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The Palestinian Christian diaspora is a direct outcome of the Israeli occupation and the original takeover of historic Palestine in 1948. The Israeli government sees no difference between a Christian and a Muslim Palestinian.

(snip)

The troubling news coming from Iraq can now be manipulated by presenting the suffering of Christians as an offshoot of a larger conflict between Islamic militants and Christians communities in Iraq. The fact is that the Iraqi society has long been known for its tolerance and acceptance of minorities. There were days when no one used such references as Shiite, Sunni and Christian; there was one Iraq and one Iraqi people. This has completely changed, for part of the strategy following the invasion of Iraq war to emphasise and manipulate the ethnic and religious demarcation of the country, creating insurmountable divides.

Without a centralised power to guide and channel the collective responses of the Iraqi people, all hell broke loose. Masked men with convenient militant names but no identities disappeared as quickly as they popped up to wreak havoc in the country. The communal trust that held together the fabric of the Iraqi society during the hardest of times dissolved. Utter chaos and mistrust took over, and the rest is history.

There is no question regarding the brutality and sheer wickedness of those who caused the recent murder of 52 Iraqi Christians, including a priest, in Baghdad’s main Roman Catholic Church. But to confuse the issue as one between Muslims and Christians or, as a UPI report misleadingly put it, "Iraq’s Christians caught between majority Shiite and minority Sunni Muslims", is a major injustice. It is also dangerous, for when such notion becomes acceptable, it enables foreign powers to justify their continued p?esence in Iraq on the premise that they are there to protect those "caught" in the middle.

For hundreds of years, every colonial power in the Middle East has used such logic to rationalise its violence and exploitation. Indeed, there are many who are ready to use such tragedies to serve their political interests or to retrospectively validate their wanton action in Iraq. ...

(snip)

The "masked men with convenient militant names but no identities" that Ramzy Baroud refers to very likely, almost certainly, without a doubt, are of covert "black" ops death squads. I'll be referring later in this post to two posts in another page here, posts for articles about both death squads and US and UK covert "black" ops during this war on Iraq.

"Bombings target Christian neighbourhoods in Baghdad

Attacks on churches and homes, including that of a family caught in cathedral assault, leave at least four dead"

by Martin Chulov, Nov. 10th, 2010

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/10/bombings-target-christians-in-baghdad

At least four people have been killed and dozens injured in co-ordinated attacks on Christian neighbourhoods in Baghdad.

More than 14 bombs and mortar shells were detonated, targeting homes and a church across the Iraqi capital.

At least one of today'sthe attacks was aimed at the family of a victim of an assault last week on a Baghdad cathedral, which left 53 worshippers dead. The terrorists identified the family by funeral signs still hanging outside the home.

Three Christian homes in the western suburb of Mansour were bombed last night with improvised explosives. Two homes were hit this morning by mortar fire in Dora, a Christian neighbourhood in the south. A bomb also exploded near a church in Kampsara and a house in neary Baladiyat.

(snip)

In the nearby suburb of al-Sana'a, Linda Jalal was woken at 5:45am by neighbours knocking on her door. "They said they saw a car drive by and drop a black bag behind our car," she said. The car had a cross hanging from the rear vision mirror. "We called the police and they said there was nothing they could do about it. We went to the back room and it exploded at 7:15am.

(snip)

The scale of attacks against Christian targets is unprecedented and is likely to give fresh impetus to calls from some Christian leaders for their community to leave Iraq.

(snip)

The Islamic State of Iraq – an al-Qaida front group – claimed responsibility for that attack and vowed to launch further attacks against Christians to avenge the imprisonment of two Muslim women it claims are being held by Coptic priests in Egypt.

(snip)

Priests and bishops in Lebanon and Egypt, which maintain strong Christian minorities, have also expressed fear for the future of Iraq's largest minority group.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, yesterday visited the scene of the cathedral attack and urged Christian worshippers to remain in Iraq. He praised France for "showing compassion" to survivors, but said other countries should not encourage emigration.

Attacks against Christian targets became commonplace in the northern city of Mosul from 2005-2009. Violence in late 2008 forced hundreds of families to flee the city for Baghdad.

But Baghdad's Christian communities have not been targeted until now. ...

Nouri al-Maliki's words are just more political bullshit, stage acting. If I am not mistaken, then Lebanon and Egypt are predominantly Muslim, Islamic, and since there are "strong Christian minorities" there, this means that Muslems and Christians live in peace, side by side, in these countries. There are Christians in other predominantly Muslem countries where there's no real or serious discord over differences in religious beliefs; and Muslems are known worldwide for their great respect for Jesus of Nazareth. The Muslems in Lebanon don't have a problem with Lebanese Christians, except for the Christians there who side or sided with Israel. F.e., when Israel launched its war on not only Hezbollah in July 2006, but rather all of Lebanon, main idiot Christians there sided with Israel. Not all Lebanese Christians were blind and many worked with the Lebanese Muslems, and Hezbollah provided aid to Christian as well as Muslem people of the country when they were in need of help.

The so-called "Islamic State of Iraq", which I guess is aka "Al Qaeda in Iraq", is surely not authentic. They don't act against the criminal occupation of Iraq and the puppet regime of the US in Iraq. They act in the opposite way. It's only the war-making and profiteering elites of the US who can benefit from this violence, and it it far more likely is them who are behind this so-called Islamic front.

"Iraq snapshot - November 3, 2010"
TheCommonIlls.blogspot.com, Nov. 3rd, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=m71487

Wednesday, November 3, 2010. Chaos and violence, a threat is issued against Iraqi Christians, Nouri's lack of protection for them is noted, the stalemate continues and -- guess what -- some are saying Nouri's about to be prime minister (we've been there before, yes), WikiLeaks gets further attention (and student press tends to do better than Big or Little Media in the US), and more.

The National (linked) notes the cry for Iraq to defend their Christian community in 2008:

(snip)

This comes as Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports (linked) that al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has postead a statement online that it will launch more attacks on Iraqi Christians, referring to Pope Benedict XVI as "the hallucinating tyrant of the Vatican" and declaring Iraqi Christians will be "extirpated and dispersed." They state: "All Christin centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the muhadjideen wherever they can reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood." Richard Spencer (Telegraph of London) observes, (linked) "While Iraqi Christians have been under siege since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the sudden public threats mark a new development." AFP reports (linked) al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is insisting that Camilia Shehata and Wafa Constantine -- married to two priests in Egypt -- are being imprisoned in Egypt because they "willingly converted to Islam." Really? Now they're concerned about forced conversions?

Angus Crawford (BBC News) reported (linked) on the forcible conversions of the pacifistic Mandaens in Iraq by Islamic militants including tennage Luay who was kidnapped, forcibly circumcised ("a practice not allowed in the Mandaean religion") or Mandaen Enhar who they 'punished' for reufsing to wear a veil by gang-raping her. Do we want to talk about the Yazidis or any of the other religious minorities in Iraq? The persecution has taken place with Nouri refusing to do a damn thing. That point's made today by The National, it was made when over 200 Yazidis were killed in August of 2007 and the KRG's Khaled Salih stated "because of the inaction of the government in Baghdad and their inability to protect the population they are suffering the way they are now." ...

(snip)

The acts described in the above article excerpt surely aren't committed by any real Al Qaeda, but definitely are like many acts committed by sick foreign soldiers and mercenaries, who've been used for covert ops, including very "black" ops, some or many of which clearly were used to try to create the appearance of real sectarian and civil war in Iraq. And the questions to always ask, "Who benefits?". No forces or groups opposed to the criminal occupation of Iraq and the foreign corruption of the government in Iraq can benefit whatsoever from sectarian violence, but the hellishly criminal foreign powers responsible for this war definitely profit.

"To get things right you will need to blame all of Iraq’s calamities on al-Qaeda"

by Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman.com, Nov. 8th, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=m71641

To blame the latest upsurge in violence in Baghdad on al-Qaeda it means that we are back to the same mantra: ....

(snip)

Everyone in Iraq, including its U.S. occupiers, have locked on one target when it comes to shouldering the responsibility for what is happening in the country. They have al-Qaeda there to blame and accuse of all the dirty policies and actions perpetrated by the various intelligence organizations and the notorious Iraqi sectarian factions.

Let us suppose that al-Qaeda, which has not flinched from bearing full responsibility for horrendous operations, is the organization which has issued the threat against Iraqi Christians.

But we all know that al-Qaeda is an international organization and is present almost everywhere. Why have not we heard of threats to drive Christians out of other Arab or Muslim countries?

Why does not al-Qaeda, which is headed by Ayman al-Dhawahiri, himself an Egyptian, takes revenge on Egyptian Copts, who are Christians, and focuses its attention to force Iraqi Christians to flee the country instead?

We are just hypothesizing and not at all trying to provoke.

But we must admit that there is chaos in the ranks of the government in Iraq and in the direction of the bloody play: that is the church massacre in Baghdad.

(snip)

Eyewitnesses who escaped the mayhem said the attackers were silent; they did not speak any language; had big bodies armed with weapons; their guns were laser-guided so that they would not miss their targets.

Now the latter is very different from what Martin Chulov reported for the Guardian, UK, so I wonder what the sources were for the above information. And the article concludes by saying the following.

It is a pity to see that there is not a single person in Iraq with the ability and authority to reveal the details of what has happened.

That's another piece of contradicting information, for some "news" people who reported on the attack said that Nouri al-Maliki and, I believe, someone of some ministry of the puppet regime in Iraq spoke, provided some details. Whether or not those details are truthful is another question, but there evidently been some since the above article was written.

With that said, however, it's important to keep in mind that the US-led war on so-called terrorism has been full of lies, Nouri al-Maliki certainly can't be trusted, and no Iraqis who are not profiting from this war on and criminal occupation of Iraq can gain anything at all from committing violence against other innocent Iraqis. The only people who can possibly "benefit", i.e., profit, are the war-making and profiteering elites of the West and their puppets in their puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is extremely doubtful that any true al Qaeda would commit violence against Iraqis over religious differences, and probably would not waste any time with stupid verbal attacks about religion, like calling Christian Iraqis infidels, f.e. Any true al Qaeda would only be against the criminal war on criminal occupation of Iraq. But it's innocent civilian Iraqis who were savagely attacked.

It would be much more likely that so-called Muslems supposedly against the criminal West in Iraq calling Christian Iraqis infidels would be brainwashed people actually working for the US.

The following article provides a video for "Footage of the Baghdad church raid".

"Baghdad church siege leaves 52 dead
Christian survivors tell how gunmen taunted them as 'infidels'"

by Martin Chulov in Baghdad, Nov. 1st, 2010

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/baghdad-church-dozens-dead

The death toll from a hostage siege inside one of Baghdad's leading Catholic churches has risen to 52, with at least another 50 wounded, as questions began to emerge about the scale of the Iraqi assault that brought the violence to an end.

Casualty figures have been rising throughout the day, less than 24 hours after al-Qaida aligned gunmen stormed the Our Lady of Salvation Chaldean Catholic church in the central district of Karrada.

(snip)

Worshippers who survived the ordeal today said it began when up to six youths wearing explosives belts and armed with assault weapons and grenades stormed inside as Sunday night mass began.

"There was a big explosion before then," said Mirna Mahrouq, 26, whose mother, Vivian Razaki, 49, was shot through the back as she cowered behind a pew. "They turned the lights off and started shooting, first in the air and then at the congregation."

Mahrouq said a group of about 100 worshippers were herded to the centre of the church by the gunmen who repeatedly taunted them. Another 60 or so were ushered to a small room at the back of the church by a priest. "They were saying to us, 'you are infidels,'" Mahrouq said. "Things like: 'we're going to heaven, you're going to hell.' They were just youths."

A three-hour lull in the violence, peppered by the sound of an occasional exploding grenade, ended just after 9pm, when dozens of Iraqi security forces blew open the church doors and stormed inside. The gun battle was ferocious, lasting almost five minutes.

It is not known how many casualties were caused during the rescue. However, survivors at Baghdad hospitals today told the Guardian that the gunmen had opened fire on them as security forces rushed in.

"Some of them were not speaking Iraqi Arabic," (my emphasis added) said Ban Abdallah, whose daughter, Marina Bresh, was shot through her leg during the initial attack. "They were contemptuous of us and they shot at the group inside the church several times before the army came."

The witness accounts appear to support a claim by senior Iraqi officials that the terrorists included a group of non-Iraqi Arabs, whose phone calls they said intelligence officials had intercepted.

(snip)

The Iraqi "security" force isn't impressively about security. Rushing in as they did would surely cause casualties; no doubt about it. Perhaps it was thought that it was better to rush in and thereby cause casualties while nonetheless preventing many, but 52 killed and 50 or more wounded doesn't make for a small number at all.

What phone calls by these gunmen were intercepted; calls during the siege, or prior to it? If they were prior to the siege and the communications mentioned plans for committing this siege, then where was Iraqi "security" when it should've been present and ready to prevent the siege from even happening? And couldn't "intelligence" have been able to tell where the calls were geographically coming from and calling to, which'd permit sending security people to these locations to arrest the callers? If they have the technological means of determining these geographic data, then why didn't they act when they intercepted the calls?

And why walk in like suicide bombers, instead of planting the explosives and leaving, before the bombs could explode? It would take [brainwashed] people.

The next article may possibly explain a couple of facets of these attacks on Christian Iraqis; including the facet of brainwashing. The non-Iraqi youth gunmen seem to certainly fit what the following article is about, which is "black" psyops used to lure socio-psychologically vulnerable youth into joining groups where the lured youth are very, very brainwashed and then trained to become murderers; puppets who can't think for themselves enough to be able to realize that they're being fooled into becoming murderers for the then controllers. These psyops for luring and brainwashing vulnerable youth is from US making, historically; and it was also applied to US military soldiers.

"Who Is Responsible for Suicide-Bomber Academies?"
by Peter Chamberlin, Nov. 8th, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=71628

That article has links to others and some US government or military documents, but some of the articles, two or more, incorrectly have Uruknet URLs. F.e., the first paragraph refers to an article entitled, "Yet Another Mosque Suicide-Bombed Near Peshawar", and it has a Uruknet url for a non-existing page. Web searches turn up these links though.

The young gunmen who committed the siege and violence in the Catholic church in Baghdad definitely seem to match the profile that Peter Chamberlin describes and it very likely is the US that's behind this and other attacks on Iraqi Christians; the recent as well as prior, past attacks. The US and UK, both, committed covert "black" ops in Iraq that most westerners accepted the Washington explanation for and which was sectarian/civil warfare, and most of it wasn't that at all. Many, if not all, so-called suicide car bombings were not really suicide bombings and some of the vehicles also had no occupatants when the vehicles exploded.

See posts #3 and 4 in the following page about death squads and covert "black" ops.

http://warisacrime.org/content/afghanistan-war-weekly-october-25-2010#co...

So-called al Qaeda in Iraq has very likely been a covert "black" op of the US for which the US secretly lured Iraqis who were opposed to the criminal occupation of their country, luring them into the ranks of this so-called al Qaeda group or organization.

According to enough different writers knowledgeable about this sort of history, the US isn't the only power to do this, but the US has done a lot of this and waging wars of aggression to gain dominance will either always or else usually entail such ops.

More of what We Allowed to be Created, it's going to be a long couple of decades coming with tragic results on many levels! And the bush, in an interview this morning, said he's proud of what he left behind {Done in Our Names!}!

We can say that to keep words short, but it definitely is imprecise. "We" did not allow the war and incidental crimes to be created. It was only Americans and other westerners who supported recourse to war on Iraq and the criminal occupation of Iraq who were responsible or guilty; some naively, because of having let themselves be fooled by obvious political bullshit, while others have a lust for war and what goes or comes with it.

The rest of us were were awake and immediately opposed to the very idea or mention of recourse to war on Iraq, so we don't make up part of this "we" that or who allowed HELL's gates to be opened over and against Iraqis.

I sometimes have used and probably still use loose wording like jimstaro's, above, to be brief, but it definitely is imprecise.

Re. the Time.com article

U.N. refugee spokesman Adrian Edwards and, thankfully, also the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg are definitely right. It's very to understand that they are.

It's criminal to be sending or forcing Iraqi refugees back to Iraq; and it doesn't matter if they're so-called "illegals". Forcing their returns is a hellbent thing to do. Even if there was no violence, the US has not seen to its legal and ethical obligation to make sure that civilian infrastructure(s) were restored. Iraqis continue to seriously lack treatment of sewage, safe drinking water in sufficient quantity, food, a livable economy, a government that is not politically corrupted and controlled by the US, and so on. Until the US sees to it that these things are corrected, it's criminal to force Iraqis back to Iraq; criminal and extremely selfish!

The Netherlands immediately halted the deportations, while Britain has said it would not force Iraqis to leave, if they petition the European court.

That's [good] news! And I don't imagine that it's very difficult to make the petition; it hopefully isn't.

Sweden presently should consider that the threats for refugees, including so-called "illegals", being forced back to Iraq include what I said further above about the US not having seen to its legal and ethical obligations for restoring infrastructure, et cetera. Going back to a [destroyed] country that will continue to be [destroyed] and left in extreme disrepair is threatening. These are real threats even if it's not threats of being physically attacked.

Iraqis didn't ask the US to commit this war!

Re. "Iraq's Christians Vow to Survive, With Muslim Help", by Time.com:

That article is linked in the one jimstaro provided a link for.

But Yonadam Kanna isn't going anywhere. "These attacks express the contempt and hatred of terrorist organizations for Christians," says Kanna, one of less than a dozen Christians in the 325-member Iraqi parliament, "but we will remain whatever they do. Iraq is our country and we won't leave."

He can only speak for himself, unless a law is created to prevent Christian Iraqis in Iraq from leaving, if and when they choose and try to leave, or until he's spoken with plenty of Christian Iraqis who say that they're not about to leave because of violence against them. It's not clear that he did the latter yet, but maybe he did.

Leaving will strategically profit the US, the war makers and profiteers, so Iraqis need to stand together against these hellish "games" of the imperialist Western elites. But, if any Christian Iraqis wish to leave because of the extremely bad situation there for them and they can leave, then it should be their choice. Christian Iraqis refusing to leave have the right to speak with their peers, say, wishing to leave in order to try to persuade them to not leave, but the choice really needs to be individual.

They'd hopefully understand that these violent attacks against them far more likely are as my first post, above, is for explaining. Christian, Muslim, and if there are any still in Iraq, then also Jewish Iraqis need to unite and stand together against the foreign predatory powers weighing down on Iraq in overt and covert ways; ways of imperialists.

The Halloween murders at Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad's middle class, mixed Karada neighborhood were followed by an announcement by the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda proxy, promising "We will open upon [the Christians] the doors of destruction and rivers of blood."

See my first post in this page. When the US and UK open the gates of HELL over others, then always expect that "all hell breaks loose".

Even so, Kanna and other like him are digging in with almost biblical resolve — and receiving support from unlikely places inside their own divided country. On the street, suspicions abound among Muslims as to why the Christian minority has been so heavily targeted.

That's very good [and] expectable news!

After all, amid Iraq's complex sectarian equation that pits Sunni versus Shi'a versus Kurd, the Christians, numbering some 400,000, are essentially non-players.

Sure, but from what I've gathered, it hasn't been all Sunni Iraqis against all Shia Iraqis, and Saddam Hussein's government was non-sectarian and non-theocratic. A high proportion of the people who made up that government were Shia Iraqis and Saddam Hussein wasn't Shia. Many Shia, Sunni, Christian, Kurdish and Jewish Iraqis lived together in peace and constructively for ages, and many Shia and Sunni intermarried. Saddam Hussein was anti-sectarianism, et cetera, and his government also had many female members.

So Time.com's words, quoted above, are much too simplistic or simpleton(ian), superficial. What the Time.com piece says does not justly describe [reality] in Iraq.

"The motive is simple, to rally Muslims against the West," says says Dr Alla Allawi, an independent political analyst and Al-Qaeda expert who teaches political science at Wasit University in extremely conservative Shi'a southeastern Iraq. "Al-Qaeda is trying to fulfill its dream of making Iraq a country with just one religion — Islam — like Afghanistan.

That's odd, for Al Qaeda doesn't do this in predominantly Muslem countries where there are Christian citizens. There're either one or two articles in my first post of this page about this. Actually, one is very specifically about this, while the other mentions what can be thought of as an example. And Al Qaeda does not control Afghanistan in any way whatsoever.

Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, Egypt, and other predominantly Muslem countries have plenty of Christian citizens even if they are minorities. Those of Palestine have been fleeing, but only because of Israel's criminal actions; not because of Muslem Palestinians. The article by Ramzy Baroud linked and excerpted from in my first post in this page briefly mentions Palestinian Christians leaving Palestine and why they've been leaving.

Demonstration(s) in France and Chicago:

"Support to the Christians from Iraq - Soutien aux Chrétiens d'Irak" (5:14)

InHomage, Nov. 14th, 2010

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF2_LmGLX6Y

The languages spoken are French and, I guess, Arabic, nothing in English.

"Assyrian Demonstration Black March Monday 11-8-2010 in Chicago Part 1 ( Save Christians of Iraq )" (10:57)

ashoorb1957, Nov. 10th, 2010

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEgSdoKcfwQ

Over 2000 Assyrians & none (sic) Assyrians from across Chicago came together on Monday 11-08-2010 in support and to protest against recent Terrorist attacks on Christian Churches in Baghdad Iraq.

Part 2 (14:52)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbb3mbSYSG4

That's a very good public demonstration with very heartfelt words from at least two young female demonstrators. And some statistical details are provided in part 1 of 2 for murders of Assyrian Christian Iraqis from 1995 to 2002 or when this present war was launched and the huge, over 2,000%, increase since this war was launched.