So much for the 'surge' working.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070508iraq-sly,1,6347982.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
Iraqi Christians flee Baghdad
By Liz Sly
Tribune foreign correspondent
May 8, 2007, 9:14 PM CDT
BAGHDAD -- Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad
district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed
unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders
and families who fled.
Similar episodes of what has become known as sectarian cleansing raged
through Baghdad neighborhoods last year as Sunnis drove Shiites from
Sunni areas and Shiites drove Sunnis from Shiite ones, but this marks
the first apparent attempt to empty an entire Baghdad neighborhood of
Christians, the Christians say.
The exodus began three weeks ago after a fatwa, or religious edict, was
issued by Sunni insurgents offering Christians a stark choice: to
convert to Islam and pay an ancient Islamic tax known as "jizyah," or to
depart within 24 hours and leave their property behind. If they did
neither, they said, they faced death.
Sunni gunmen have been enforcing the edict with a dozen or so
kidnappings, a shooting, by knocking on doors and by posting leaflets on
walls—actions that have prompted hundreds of Christians to leave an area
that was once home to one of Baghdad's largest Christian communities.
The insurgents' campaign in Dora is the first major incident of
sectarian cleansing since the Baghdad security plan, a centerpiece of
President Bush's strategy to win in Iraq, went into effect in
mid-February and extra U.S. troops began arriving in Baghdad in an
effort to retake the city from insurgents and militias.
"They are talking about security plans and bringing peace, but nothing
arrived in Dora. There are no rules, no government and no government
forces," said Bishop Shlimon Warduni, auxiliary bishop of the Chaldean
Patriarchate, the ancient Christian sect to which most of the Christians
in the Dora area belong. "This is a full-scale persecution. In all of
Iraq's history we didn't face a situation like this."
About 150 fleeing families have reported to churches elsewhere in
Baghdad, seeking help in finding alternative accommodations, he said.
Many others with resources or relatives in safer areas have left Dora
without informing church leaders, said Yonadem Kanna, a Christian member
of parliament representing the Assyrian Democratic Party. Kanna
estimates that 300 families have been driven out of Dora in the past
three weeks.
Iraq's minority Christian community, put at 800,000 on the eve of the
U.S. invasion, has already been decimated by threats, fear and
intimidation over the past four years, and as many as half of Iraq's
Christians are now living outside the country, according to the latest
report of the U.S. International Commission on Religious Freedom issued
last week.
Church leaders estimate that half of Dora's Christian community has
already fled the notoriously violent Sunni extremist stronghold in
southwestern Baghdad, a community of 500,000 in which Sunnis, Shiites
and Christians once lived alongside one another. Shiites have already
been expelled from all but the southernmost edge of the neighborhood.
Although Christians had been individually targeted, usually for ransom,
as a community they had largely been ignored, residents say.
Among those who fled is Ayleen Georges, 40, whose husband was kidnapped
in early April by Sunni insurgents. They later apologized, told him they
had abducted the wrong man, and let him go. Ten days later, after the
edict appeared, they kidnapped him again.
He is too shaken to talk about being abducted, but she described how the
gunmen repeatedly told him he would be killed unless he converted to
Islam or left his home within 24 hours.
"They said to him, 'Why haven't you become a Muslim?' He told them, 'We
have faith in the Virgin Mary.' And then they cursed the Virgin Mary,"
she said, breaking down in tears. "They told him to leave within 24
hours and they said we had to leave all our property and possessions
behind, or we would be killed."
About a dozen similar kidnappings have taken place, scattered across the
Dora area, with the apparent intention of terrorizing Christians into
leaving, said Christian lawmaker Abdul Ahad Afram, of the Assyrian
Democratic Party.
Though there was a similar drive to eject Christians from the northern
city of Mosul last year, this is the first systematic drive against
Christians in Baghdad, he said.
"In Dora we're seeing an organized operation to kick out all the
Christians and seize their property," he said.
The instruction to leave behind all property and possessions was
emphasized by the insurgents in the area, and those who fled say they
did not dare take so much as a suitcase.
Sanharib Benuel, 23, left his home with his mother and brother last week
after fliers spelling out the threat were posted on the walls around his
neighborhood. He hoped to trick the Sunni insurgents by packing his
suitcases, leaving a Sunni neighbor in his house, and then arranging for
another neighbor to transport the suitcases to a relative's home the
following day.
But within hours, he said, gunmen came to the house and ordered the
neighbor to leave, telling him: "This is a Christian house, and it has
been confiscated." They then ransacked the house and stole its contents,
said Benuel, who is now living in a church in another Baghdad
neighborhood and is working at the church as a guard.
Abdullah al-Noufali, head of the Christian Endowment, a state body that
oversees Iraq's churches, said he had heard of many instances in which
local Sunni residents had offered to help or protect their threatened
Christian neighbors. He blames outsiders—the Al Qaeda-affiliated
insurgents who have converged on Dora over the past three years, turning
it into one of Baghdad's most notorious and violent extremist strongholds.
"The problem isn't religious, it's economic. The Christians are soft
targets. They don't react with violence. They will pay or leave,"
al-Noufali said. "Families are leaving every day, and by this summer,
there won't be one Christian left in Dora."
According to Kanna, the pressure on Christians in Dora has intensified
since the arrival in recent months of a fresh influx of Al
Qaeda-affiliated insurgents squeezed out of their stronghold in western
Anbar province by a U.S.-backed tribal alliance. Gunmen began visiting
churches in the area and ordered them to take down the cross, and since
then, all the area's clergymen have fled, and the district's nine
churches have closed.
Though U.S. forces have increased their presence in the area since the
Baghdad security plan went into effect, they appear oblivious to this
latest persecution of Christians, said Ahmed al-Mukhtar, 29, a salesman
who joined the exodus after gunmen opened fire on three of his neighbors
as they drove to work together in late April, prompting all the
Christian families he knows in the immediate vicinity to flee.
"They don't know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys," he
said. "When the Americans patrol, people rush to open their shops and to
go shopping, and when they leave, everyone rushes home. The gunmen are
free to do anything, to kill anyone to force anyone to leave."
A U.S. military spokesman did not respond to a query about the Christian
exodus from Dora, but U.S. officials have pointed to the success of the
Baghdad security plan in bringing about a sharp reduction in the level
of Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence in recent weeks.
lsly@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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