Mosul Christians Reluctant to Return
ICC Note
“It’s true that there is a heavy security presence in the city, but Christians are still targeted. So what’s the use of [added security]?”
By Hisham Mohammed Ali
11/20/2008 Iraq (IWPR)-Christians from Mosul are hesitant about returning home despite cash offerings and pledges of stronger security in and around the volatile northern city.
The Iraqi government has boosted the number of security forces and troops in Mosul to 35,000 and is offering displaced Christian families up to 1.5 million Iraqi dinars (1,300 US dollars) to return to their homes. Iraqi president Jalal Talabani also earlier this month pledged 900,000 dollars to support and protect the community.
International aid agencies and local rights groups report that while Christians have slowly trickled back into Mosul in recent weeks, many are unwilling to return to their homes out of fear that their community will be targeted again.
Violence has declined, but there is concern that the killings of two Christian women in Mosul last week could deter Christians from returning.
“We would like to go back home,” said Kamu. “We need security, but unfortunately security in Mosul is nothing more than pictures on TV.”
UNHCR said many Christians were returning to Mosul out of concern for their job security or for education. Many were staying in churches or in private homes and relied on aid groups for basic supplies.
The US military has blamed al-Qaeda sympathisers for targeting Christians in Mosul , the capital of Nineveh province and a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency which Iraqi and US forces are battling to control.
The majority of Iraq ’s Christians are believed to reside in Nineveh . Assyrians, Chaldeans and Catholics largely consider the province their homeland.
Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed Al-Askari said the government had no specific plan to protect only Christians but was working to establish security in Mosul “for everyone”.
Mosul deputy governor Khasro Goran said the government had responded to the attacks by sending in additional police and military and that “tough security procedures [were] in place”.
Agence-France Presse, citing an unnamed senior Iraqi official, reported that Baghdad had replaced the commander of operations in the province and sent two brigades to Mosul following the attacks on Christians in October.
But the steps have done little to ease the fears of Mosul ’s Christian community, which along with other religious and ethnic minorities, has suffered persecution in the city and elsewhere over the past five years.
“Government procedures are not good enough,” said Qriyaqus Mansur Gorgis, head of the Bet Nahrain Humanitarian Association. “It’s true that there is a heavy security presence in the city, but Christians are still targeted. So what’s the use of [added security]?”
The attacks have also resurrected long-standing Kurdish-Christian tensions and debates over whether Iraq ’s minorities should have autonomous administrative areas.
Some Christians from Nineveh have fled to neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan and see the Kurds as protectors, but Qasim Amin of Kurdish Human Rights Watch said that many of the displaced his organisation interviewed blamed the Kurdish authorities for the violence.
