Support for 100 refugee families from Baghdad and Mosul, in Sulaimaniyya

Help for poor families in Soulamaniyia, near Kirkuk. @ACN
Help for poor families in Soulamaniyia, near Kirkuk. @ACN

Sulaimaniyya, Northern Iraq. A photograph sent to ACN by the Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk shows a priest sitting together with a married couple on a sofa. The plaster is crumbling on the wall behind and there is darkness around them. It is obvious that they are sitting in a very basic and ill-lit room, some kind of emergency shelter. While the man stares somewhat mistrustfully at the camera, his wife attempts to smile. Perhaps she is relieved to have found some place where her family can stay for the time being. The other pictures show makeshift sleeping accommodation, consisting of layers of blankets. A young boy and an older girl brighten up the darkness around them with their broadly smiling faces. Another picture shows a father and mother with their daughter, all sitting on their simple sleeping mats. Their faces are solemn and yet perhaps one detects just a flicker of new hope in their eyes. These Iraqi refugee families have lost all their possessions; and yet their hope remains unbroken. 

Archbishop Sako's appeal for help reached ACN in the summer of 2009. He was asking us to support 100 Christian refugee families who had taken shelter in the northern Iraqi town of Sulaimaniyya,  in Kurdistan, after fleeing their homes cities of Baghdad and Mosul. There is almost no hope of finding work here, and so the families have been living, with little more than the clothes on their backs, in makeshift shelters. There is no question of returning to their home cities either, where there is a well founded fear of assassination. Iraqi Christians are frequently the target of attacks by extremist Muslim groups and over the past five years many Iraqi Christians have died a violent death as a result, including two priests and even a bishop - Archbishop Faraj Raho of Mosul. According to Archbishop Sako, there is an ongoing "ethnic and religious cleansing" in Mosul. He fears that Christianity may even die out completely in his country. In July 2009 alone, extremists carried out bomb attacks against no fewer than seven churches, killing four people and injuring another 40. In November 2009 further terrorist bomb attacks caused extensive damage to Saint Ephraim's church and to the mother house of the Dominican sisters in Mosul. A month later a grenade exploded in a Catholic school in the city. And things are no better in Baghdad.

The discrimination and intimidation are causing Christians to leave their home towns and cities in droves and flee to neighbouring countries, especially Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, often in the hope of travelling on to Europe or the United States. According to the UNHCR there are now 2 million Iraqi refugees living abroad and still more within Iraq itself. Many of these refugees are moving to the autonomous region of Kurdistan in the North, where there is little unrest. In some cases the towns they move to have doubled in size owing to the enormous influx. But at least the refugee families in Sulaimaniyya feel safer. There have been almost no bomb attacks in this Kurdish town since the war ended in 2003. It is well placed geographically - this is one advantage. Nestling between the mountains, the town has just two access roads, which can be easily controlled.

Nobody knows when the situation of these refugees is going to improve. The emigration of the Christians of Iraq is "a major challenge for the Church", says Archbishop Sako. It seems that neither the American forces nor the Iraqi government and police are capable of protecting the Christians in Iraq. There is nobody there for them except the Church. ACN has given €10,000 to help these refugee families.

To know about this and many other similar projects in favour of the pastoral needs of the suffering Church, please contact our national offices.