For exiled Iraqi Christians, the mood is practical not self-pitying
By B.C.
ACROSS the world, Catholics and some eastern Christians (those who use the modern calendar) are today marking one of the most important feasts in the church year: the end of the Virgin Mary's earthly life and her elevation to heaven. In traditional communities, this is a intensely felt moment, as Mary's protective, nurturing power seems to fade from immediate view—and the end of summer approaches.
The prayers will be especially poignant at the Holy Trinity Catholic church in the prosperous district of Brook Green in West London: one of four places in the city where recently exiled Christians from northern Iraq gather to worship. Many of the Brook Green faithful come from Qaraqosh, which was a Christian stronghold until a couple of weeks ago but is now virtually emptied of its Christian population thanks to the latest advances of Islamist fighters. Qaraqosh Christians—mostly of the Syrian Catholic denomination—regard the Virgin Mary as their protector.
Still, the mood in this diaspora stronghold is not one of maudlin self-pity but of hard-headed practicality. Only a few months ago, when their kin back home were still faring relatively well, the Iraqi Christians of London seemed to have ample spare energy to concentrate on the successful careers that many of them have established in their adopted homeland. "We have 100 doctors in our parish," says their priest, Monsignor Nizar Semaan. "We are people who work hard and have never betrayed our new country, Britain."
These habits of self-advancement and energy were learned back home. Many of the congregation emerged from an Iraqi micro-world in which Christians stood out as relatively upwardly mobile and public-spirited; they ran hospitals which provided medical services for all, and many Christians teachers shared their knowledge with Muslim villages.
As of this month, that world is in ruins. Following the Islamists' onslaught, many tens of thousands of Christians—perhaps 100,000 in all—have fled from Qaraqosh and neighbouring towns and villages in the Nineveh Plains region. Many are camped out in the Kurdish administrative centre of Erbil and its suburbs, which is now the only relatively safe space for Christians, although fighting is going on nearby. Members of the Brook Green congregation, along with the other three Iraqi church communities in London, are in daily, anxious touch with relatives back home. Some of those relatives are stuck in tiny apartments where an extended family of 20 might be cooped up; the less lucky ones are camped out in parks and schools.
But Monsignor Semaan sounds crisp rather than sentimental when he assesses the situation. As he puts it, either there is a future for some Christians in Iraq, or there is not. There will only be a future, in his view, if Western powers are prepared to intervene, not just to safeguard Erbil but re-establish the adjacent area of Nineveh Plains, including Qaraqosh, as a safe place for Christians and other minorities to live. His co-religionists have no interest in a future as barely surviving displaced persons who are kept alive with supplies of food and water. People need to go back to their livelihoods; students want to complete their studies. "Perhaps our people will get food and water, but what are they supposed to after that?"
If the outside world lacks the will to ensure a sustainable future for Iraq's ancient Christian communities, then it has a duty to accommodate them somewhere else, the Monsignor adds. If security could not be assured, "then the only other option—and we say this with great sadness—is to leave Iraq. It would be tragic, but better than dying. And the international community would have a duty to help us leave and re-settle." Such an outcome would mean the end of Christianity in Iraq, the cleric sighs.
Not the least part of the tragedy would be the break-up of the rich social world that existed until recently in Qaraqosh. Inevitably, the town's erstwhile Christian inhabitants would be scattered between different countries. Doubtless they will prosper in their new countries, but a cultural universe which has existed since the earliest Christian centuries will have vanished. It would be the world's loss as well as Iraq's.
