ICC Note: Many of those remaining of Iraq’s Christian community were among the nearly 3 million people who’ve been displaced by violence from ISIS militants in western and central Iraq. Many of them fled to Erbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region. The small Christian community there was overwhelmed by the influx of people but has done an incredible job in caring for these people who’ve lost so much.
05/26/2015 Iraq (Newsday) The news from the Middle East has become so grim I am always looking for a bright spot.
So, on a recent trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, it was a relief and a surprise to come across an upbeat story in an unexpected place: a church in Irbil that houses Christian refugees from northern Iraq who barely escaped the Islamic State invasion in August.
The first hint of something unexpected was the shrieks of children’s laughter when I entered the Mar Elias churchyard. The next surprise was seeing young boys and girls playing volleyball together on a paved court under improvised night lights, a sight I’d never seen in the gender-conscious Middle East.
This scene was a far cry from the dark days when the Islamic State overran ancient Christian towns in Nineveh province and 60,000 Christians fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they crowded into cheap apartments or churches or squatted in unfinished buildings.
The Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs, welcomed the Christians but couldn’t cope with the influx (having already accepted 200,000 Syrian refugees and previous waves of Christians fleeing Baghdad and Mosul).
At Mar Elias, 110 families, 564 people in all, jammed into its large grounds in Ankawa, a Christian suburb of Irbil. Mar Elias is a Chaldean, or Eastern-rite Catholic church, but the refugees included other Catholics and Syrian Orthodox. They were a confused angry crowd with hundreds of traumatized children.
“We had to use the church garden and an unfinished mall,” recalled Father Douglas Bazi, an ebullient Iraqi cleric with a brush cut and a short salt-and-pepper beard, wearing black slacks and an electric-blue short-sleeved shirt.
But when relief agencies finally sought to move the refugees into rental apartments or makeshift camps, a strange thing happened. “People here refused to move,” Father Douglas said.
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[Full Story]
A Christian Oasis In Iraq
ICC Note: Many of those remaining of Iraq’s Christian community were among the nearly 3 million people who’ve been displaced by violence from ISIS militants in western and central Iraq. Many of them fled to Erbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region. The small Christian community there was overwhelmed by the influx of people but has done an incredible job in caring for these people who’ve lost so much.
05/26/2015 Iraq (Newsday) The news from the Middle East has become so grim I am always looking for a bright spot.
So, on a recent trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, it was a relief and a surprise to come across an upbeat story in an unexpected place: a church in Irbil that houses Christian refugees from northern Iraq who barely escaped the Islamic State invasion in August.
The first hint of something unexpected was the shrieks of children’s laughter when I entered the Mar Elias churchyard. The next surprise was seeing young boys and girls playing volleyball together on a paved court under improvised night lights, a sight I’d never seen in the gender-conscious Middle East.
This scene was a far cry from the dark days when the Islamic State overran ancient Christian towns in Nineveh province and 60,000 Christians fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they crowded into cheap apartments or churches or squatted in unfinished buildings.
The Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs, welcomed the Christians but couldn’t cope with the influx (having already accepted 200,000 Syrian refugees and previous waves of Christians fleeing Baghdad and Mosul).
At Mar Elias, 110 families, 564 people in all, jammed into its large grounds in Ankawa, a Christian suburb of Irbil. Mar Elias is a Chaldean, or Eastern-rite Catholic church, but the refugees included other Catholics and Syrian Orthodox. They were a confused angry crowd with hundreds of traumatized children.
“We had to use the church garden and an unfinished mall,” recalled Father Douglas Bazi, an ebullient Iraqi cleric with a brush cut and a short salt-and-pepper beard, wearing black slacks and an electric-blue short-sleeved shirt.
But when relief agencies finally sought to move the refugees into rental apartments or makeshift camps, a strange thing happened. “People here refused to move,” Father Douglas said.
…
