Warnings of one other Christian exodus from Iraq

Christians are leaving Iraq of their droves because they can not see any future within the country after years of political instability and persecution. 

Cardinal Louis Sako said in an announcement on the web site of the Chaldean Church in Iraq that a fresh exodus of Christians from the country is being driven by a “state of instability” and “lack of equity”. 

The patriarch of Iraq’s largest denomination said that the Christian minority has been suffering “painfully” from kidnapping and killing for ransom since 2003. 

Christians were also targeted in horrific attacks and displaced from their homes in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain by the Islamic State (ISIS), but though Iraq formally declared ISIS defeated in 2017, the cardinal said that forced conversions by ISIS are still happening, as is the “Islamisation of minors”.

The cardinal also reported “attacks” on Christian jobs and the “seizure of their properties”. 

There were an estimated 800,000 Christians in Iraq before 2003 but today the figure is believed to face at around only 153,000. 

Cardinal Sako said that 100 Christian families had recently left Qaraqosh, within the Nineveh Plain, and that an analogous exodus was occurring in other cities like Ankawa, within the Kurdistan region. 

The cardinal said people were leaving because of tension concerning the future and the federal government’s failure to pay salaries for months. He sees no motion on the a part of the federal government to support Christians. 

“The government isn’t serious about doing justice to Christians. They keep saying pretty words without motion. More than 1,000,000 Christians have emigrated, most of them were with qualified scientific, economic and expert background,” he said. 

Open Doors’ Matthew Barns (name modified for security reasons), who works with the charity’s partners in Iraq, said that many Christian families “now not see a future in their very own country”. 

“After so a few years of wars, persecution by extremists, and for some families being displaced multiple times, they simply want to go away and construct their future elsewhere,” he said. 

“The disaster with the fireplace in a marriage hall in September 2023 within the Christian town of Qaraqosh that killed over 130 Christians, that was an accident probably partly brought on by lack of monitoring of security guidelines by the federal government. For many individuals in Qaraqosh the shortage of presidency control is one other confirmation that nobody cares concerning the Christians.

“In the Nineveh Plain, the Shia Muslims are specifically feared by the Christian communities. They get the sensation that the Shia are steadily taking on properties once owned by Christians, causing an ethnic change. But all of the bad things that occur to the Christian communities add to the sensation that there is no such thing as a future for them in Iraq.”