Iraq's Assyrian Christians find temporary home in Kurdistan
ICC Note
Thousands of Iraqi Christians, who have fled their homes due to attacks by Islamic extremists, have are temporarily settled in Kurdistan .
08/05/2009 Iraq (McCLATCHY)-For 35-year-old Rajo Qardaq Palander, a church security guard, the breaking point came last year, when insurgents demanded that he pay $20,000 or abandon his home in Baghdad 's Dora neighborhood.
The choice was easy. He slipped out of Dora in the dead of night, joining the exodus of Assyrian Christians from Baghdad and Mosul to this haven in Iraq 's Kurdish-controlled north.
"I held on as long as I could," Palander, 35 said. "I have no future in Iraq ."
One of Iraq's most ancient national groups, the Assyrian Christians, who're Eastern Orthodox Christians, have largely quit their ancestral home in Arab Iraq and fled to the Kurdish region, where tens of thousands now live, or abroad.
The pressure on the Assyrians continues: Five churches were bombed in Baghdad in early July and killings continue in Mosul . In Ainkawa, a city of 40,000 on the outskirts of the main city of Irbil , there's sanctuary, castle-like churches, which dominate entire city blocks, and liquor, a trade that Christians dominated in Baghdad , is for sale openly.
Still, refugees and others who're choosing to stay in Iraq fear the days ahead. They're hoping to make political gains in Iraq 's Kurdish provinces and to reclaim lost land.
"For the time being, it's a better place. But it's a dark future," said Father Isha Najiba, an Eastern Assyrian priest in Ainkawa who served in Dora until 2002.
Najiba said that only 150 of the 1,100 Assyrians who lived in his Dora neighborhood before the war are still in Baghdad . The others are in Syria , Jordan , or cities such as Ainkawa, in Iraq 's Kurdish provinces.
Kurds are sensitive to charges that they ignore minority rights because of their history as victims of mass killings committed by Saddam's military. They say they were careful to respect Christian rights when they wrote a regional constitution that recognizes minority languages, allows them to run their own schools and buy property.
"I have nothing here. What am I without my parents?" asked Najiba, who found work in Ainkawa as a security guard at St. Joseph 's Church.
"Christians have been separated into many parts," he said. "There's no hope for the people who have emigrated. They won't come back."
