There is at least one Christian leader who has made this into an issue,
Pat Robertson. On balance this is all for the good even if, true to form,
Robertson has done so in his usual bumbling way, someone who is basically
poorly informed and is clueless about much of what he is talking about.
At least he sees the problem, is trying to understand it, and is making
an appeal to other Christians to help.
So far, while there may be believers who I do not now know about,
he is the only one. I know that Ernie cares about this here at RC.org,
but there is no evidence that anyone else does. What does this say?
You tell me.
Billy
-----------------------------------------------
Iraq's Waterless Christians: The Campaign to Expel a Religion
Jason Motlagh ("Bloomberg," July 22, 2014)
Qaraqosh is one of the last refuges in northern Iraq for Christians fleeing
persecution by the militants of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, who
swept into the region in June. A historic Christian city of 50,000 about 19
miles southeast of Mosul, Qaraqosh is under the formidable protection of
the well-armed Peshmerga—the Kurdish fighters whose autonomous region
disputes the area with both ISIL and the Iraqi central government based in
Baghdad. Now, in a further effort to oust Christians from land they have
inhabited for two millennia, the Islamic militants have begun turning off a
precious utility: water.
Since taking Mosul on June 10, ISIL militants have squeezed Qaraqosh and
nearby Christian villages by blocking the pipes that connect the communities
with the Tigris river. Without a sufficient number of deep wells to fill
the gap, the city must have water trucked in, at huge cost, from
Kurdish-controlled areas just 15 miles away. Since ISIL took over key
refineries in
northern Iraq, the price of fuel has spiked across the region. The parched
residents of Qaraqosh must pay about $10 every other day to fill up emergency
water tanks, no small sum in this economically depressed part of Iraq.
Outside one of the town’s 12 churches, people queue from 6 a.m. until
midnight to get their daily rations from a well. Flatbed trucks are joined by
children with pushcarts and riders on bicycles bearing empty jugs. “Our lives
revolve around water,” says Laith, 28, a school teacher who returned with
his family a day earlier from a suburb of Erbil, the Kurdish regional
capital, 45 miles away, to which thousands of threatened Christians have
migrated. Though aid agencies have erected several water depots around town,
supplies are limited, barely enough to sustain large families in the
100-degree-plus heat. Plans to dig new wells will take at least several months
to
fulfill.
Christians have been fleeing ISIL-controlled territory since the militants
and their allies overwhelmed the garrisons of the Baghdad government in
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and its most Christian. The Islamic State,
which sees itself as the restoration of the caliphate to rule all Muslims,
immediately imposed anti-Christian rules, ordering Muslim employers to fire
Christian workers. The homes of Christian religious leaders were ransacked
and occupied by militants. A Christian population as old as the faith
shrank from 3,000 families to several hundred in weeks.
On July 18, ISIL ordered non-Muslims to convert or pay a tax last imposed
during the Ottoman empire. If not, they would face “death by the sword,”
according to a decree that was read out in city mosques and broadcast from
loudspeakers around town. Many families then fled to Qaraqosh. Keen to absorb
the disputed territory, the Kurds dug in around Qaraqosh and three smaller
Christian villages, to the relief of refugees and locals who have faced
the mortar attacks accompanying ISIL’s offensive.
“The [militants] want to erase our history and break our faith,” says
Father Amanoel Adel Kalloo, a Syrian Catholic priest from Mosul who has taken
shelter in Qaraqosh with more than 470 families. “We must struggle to
preserve this, but so much has already been lost.” Father Yosef, a second
displaced clergyman, said that the hard deadline set by the militants to
depart or
convert has forced people to abandon homes and businesses, often with
little more than a car and some clothing.
Apart from the enforced drought conditions, electrical blackouts last most
of the day. Merchants say business has been hamstrung further by a trade “
embargo” that ISIL has placed on surrounding Muslim towns that used to trade
with Qaraqosh. Shops are mostly shuttered, and work is scare. Firaz
Petros, 27, says the situation has compelled him to car-pool an hour each way
to
Erbil, where he works in waste disposal. “We’re barely earning enough to
live,” he says, adding that he and fellow local commuters share the cost of
a $45 daily gas bill.
Despite the hardships—and the presence of jihadists less than a mile beyond
the city limits—local religious leaders say that must resist the urge to
leave, or risk losing their centuries-old identity. For Christianity to
endure in Iraq, “we must stay until the end,” says Archbishop Basile Casmoussa
of the Syrian Catholic church in Mosul, who was kidnapped for a day by
radical gunmen in 2005. With his exiled flock in Qaraqosh, he laments that
mass is not celebrated in Mosul for the first time in 1,600 years. He draws
hope, however, in the fact that churches in Qaraqosh are still drawing
crowds. “Our faith is being tested,” he says.
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