In June 2014, a vast exodus took place in Iraq following an
ultimatum given by ISIS to Christians in that country that if they did not
convert to Islam by noon on July 19, 2014, they would pay a fine of 470 Dollars
per family or be executed.
This is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.
The murals of the earliest church building to have been discovered in that part
of the world was painted between 232 AD and 256 AD, three-quarters of a century
before the Roman emperor, Constantine, recognized Christianity.
The travails of the Christians living in Iraq began with the
invasion of that country by Britain and the United States under the leadership
of Tony Blair and George Bush.
The naive and stupendously ill-conceived foreign policy of
Britain and the United States over the issues in the Middle East in 2003 is
about to wipe out the practice of the Christian religion in Iraq.
Because Saddam Hussein refused to reduce the price of crude oil
sold by his country and perhaps because he made a mistake by annexing Kuwait,
the Government of the United States plotted his downfall by alleging that
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Even when no evidence was found in
support of that claim, the US government kept on insisting that Iraq had
chemical weapons and later, George bush convinced the then British Prime
minister, Tony Blair to join him in the plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
In the end, Hussein’s government was toppled and himself
executed by the US government.
For however revolting Saddam Hussein may have been, he did at
least tolerate Iraq’s Christian community, which at one time was almost 1.5
million-strong. In the years following the invasion, the number of Christians
dwindled to 300,000.
Then, in June 2014, Islamic State captured Mosul, Iraq’s second
biggest city, which still had a sizeable Christian minority.
According to Canon Andrew White, a brave Anglican priest
resident in Baghdad: ‘It looks as though the end [of Christianity in Iraq]
could be very near.’
The largely untold story of the persecuted Iraqi Christian
minority is especially shaming for those avowedly Christian leaders, George W.
Bush and Tony Blair, who were responsible for the invasion of Iraq.
The lives of the Christians in Iraq obviously are not more
precious than those of the no-less-terrorized Shia Muslims, but one might have
expected Christian leaders to have spared a thought for them before they set
about tearing apart the country’s social fabric.
It is certain, however, that if the admittedly odious Saddam
Hussein were still in power, Islamic State would not be on the rampage in
northern Iraq and the lives of thousands of Christians and Shias would not have
been lost.
And it is also certain that the number of people who have died since
the invasion — as many as 750,000, according to reputable studies — far exceeds
the number of victims of Saddam Hussein during his much longer period in power.
No doubt thousands more innocent people are doomed to be killed.
Cruel and despotic though he was, Saddam did
offer Iraq a measure of stability which was destroyed by the invasion. This
repulsive strongman at least held his country together, which the divisive
Shia-dominated government in Baghdad cannot do.
In 2011, David Cameron made a similar error in forcing out
Gaddafi.
In the Libya over which he presided for more than 40 years,
there were no factions of militias killing innocent people and destroying their
homes and livelihoods.
Tony Blair displayed total arrogance and ignorance in his
foreign excursions.
His habit was to divide the world into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’.
Before the British-led invasion of Kosovo in 1999, Blair demonized
the Serb leader, Slobodan Milosevic, whom he referred to as a war criminal.
He had rushed to Tahrir Square in Cairo after the ousting of
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak to celebrate what he appeared to think was the
birth of democracy in the country.
As it turned out, it was no such thing. The Egyptian Army led by
Abdel Fattah El-Sisi overthrew Morsi’s government and later organized a ‘kangaroo’
presidential election which retained him in power. The Prime Minister — in his
innocence — thought that democracy was much easier to establish in the Middle
East than it has turned out to be.
A couple of years ago, Blair tried to involve Britain in the
Syrian war on the side of the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad but the
attempt was thwarted by the British Parliament. It has since become
increasingly clear that the rebels are far from being ‘goodies’. Indeed, they
include the genocidal Islamic State.
Under Tony Blair and, to a lesser extent, David Cameron,
Britain’s foreign policy has been driven by a kind of do-gooding naivety rather
than a hard-headed assessment of our own interests or a sophisticated appraisal
of the consequences of getting rid of disagreeable, but efficient, rulers.
The recent call by President Barak Obama to
help Christians and other minorities, expelled from cities and villages in
northern Iraq, return to their ancient homeland may not achieve the desired
results because Christians, of whom around 120,000 have taken refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, will not be willing
to return home even if their persecutors suddenly vanish.
Western leaders have ignorantly assumed that democracy can be
imposed with the barrel of a gun. Of course it can’t be — as Iraq and Libya
have demonstrated, and as we will see in Afghanistan once the last American
troops have left.
One day, perhaps, Iraq and Libya will be democratic, but if they
ever are, it will not be as a result of western meddling but because that is
what people in those countries, and their rulers, want.
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