Sunni sheikh is protecting Chaldean Christians

This very positive report comes from Steve Schippert at National Review. Of course you wouldn’t see it in the mainstream media; it has to be a conservative publication that tells us good news about Iraqi Christians and Muslims.

…not many are aware that Sheikh Ahmed al-Rishawi’s Iraq Awakening Movement (Sahwah al-Iraq), which led the rejection of al-Qaeda from within Iraq, is also the protector of Iraq’s Chaldean Catholics — not only in Fallujah’s Anbar Province, but throughout Iraq, wherever the Awakening’s “Sons of Iraq” anti-al-Qaeda forces can be seen patrolling the streets.

Schippert quotes a Catholic website called Against the Grain:

As readers are no doubt aware, by virtue of their Christian faith, the Chaldeans have been subject to horrible persecution, the imposition of jaziyah, kidnappings and even targeted assassinations by Al Qaeda in Iraq.

As my source reports, Sheikh Iyad has apparently agreed to join the Sahawa [Awakening], allowing Sheikh Ahmad to add “Protector of the Chaldean Catholics” to his list of formal titles in a public ceremony covered by Arab media:

After hearing Sheikh Iyad’s account of the suffering that the Chaldean Catholics have endured in Iraq, Sheikh Ahmad publicly declared that from this time forward they would be under his protection, that anyone who killed a Chaldean will be regarded as one who has killed in a member of his tribe (under the medieval Islamic concept of qisas this is a capital offense), and money will be provided from the Sahawa al-Iraq treasury to rebuild the churches and cemeteries that al-Qaeda destroyed. He justified this by quoting from the Qu’ran and stating that there should be no compulsion in matters of religion because truth stands free from error.

Consequently, in a moment of Muslim-Christian solidarity, it would appear that the Chaldeans have a new and very significant protector from persecution at the hands of Al Qaeda.

Then Schippert comments:

Maybe so so few actually know this because nothing blew up to make the evening news. Regardless, shame on me for not writing on the Iraq Awakening’s embrace and protection of Iraq’s tormented Chaldean Catholic community when it happened.

If only more Americans knew of such things: Armed Sunnis protecting Iraqi Catholics, Sunni and Shi’a working together in Anbar protecting each other, and each of them wanting American forces to stay and see them through.

This answers many questions I have been asking. The sheikh is protecting the Chaldeans from al Qaeda. No mainstream media outlet that I’ve seen has made this clear. The Christians are always under threat from “Muslims,” “Iraqi Muslims” or some other vague term. Since the Christians lived among the Muslims in Iraq for many centuries I did not understand why their neighbors would suddenly turn on them. As I suspected, it was al Qaeda that was targeting them.

What I still don’t understand is why the media don’t report this. I understand why they don’t report cooperation between Muslims and Christians: that might provide a bit of positive news that could make the hated George Bush look good. But why imply that ordinary Iraqis are trying to exterminate their Christian neighbors if that is not the case? Perhaps they just can’t be bothered to find out the truth.

If this cooperation and protection is widespread, it means that perhaps at least some of the Iraqi Christian refugees can go home. So I am going to stop saying that we should try to resettle all the Iraqi Christians, at least until I can find out more.

Evangelicals and Iraqi Christians in Jordan

Last October we posted an article by Ken Timmerman in Newsmax on the discriminatory treatment Christians were getting by the UN refugee agency in Jordan.  Timmerman was part of a delegation of Christians who visited Jordan to investigate the treatment of Christian Iraqi refugees.  I didn’t realize it before, but two members of the delegation started a blog, Christian Refugee Crisis: Bill Murray, chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, and Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International.

They don’t post very often, but there’s some good information in their dispatches. This morning Murray posts on Christians and Evangelicals in Jordan. He summarizes the situation of Christians in Jordan — not good, of course.

There are some churches that can operate openly in Jordan and assist Iraqi Christian refugees such as the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. This does not mean that they have the same liberties as they would in a nation such as the United States. Unlike the evangelical efforts some of the assistance to Iraqi Christians by the Catholic and Orthodox churches can be learned about online. However, the Jordanian government remains weary [sic -- he means wary] of evangelical Christians and last year expelled numerous pastors and missionaries who were not Jordanian citizens. 

I’ve read in other sources that evangelicals have been a disruptive influence in the Middle East. The ancient indigenous churches are having a difficult time, but they have longstanding relationships of some kind with their societies.  It would seem better for foreigners who wish to help Christians to work through the existing churches. But of course the ancient churches are Catholic, and evangelicals are usually not fond of Catholics, so they set up their own organizations and attempt to convert the Catholics, as well as Muslims insofar as they can get away with it. (I am no expert on this and am willing to hear other viewpoints.) Murray’s organization delivered $24,000 worth of medical supplies last week. Murray’s conclusion:

The pain of these people will stop only when the government of the United States admits to its responsibility and assists them to resettle. Our government just will not take on this responsibility and still sends all refugees to the UNHCR. The Administration’s policy is that Christians face no persecution in Iraq, that their pain and suffering is caused by criminal gangs. This attitude must change.

I knew that our government will not give the Iraqi Christians special treatment, but I did not know there was a policy that they are not persecuted in Iraq. This is a terrible policy. As we’ve said before, we have a special responsibility to the Christians who have been displaced because of their religion. We should establish a safe zone for them in Iraq and resettle them there; insofar as that is not possible, we should give them priority to come to the United States.

Burmese conflicted about coming to the US

Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the large number of Burmese refugees entering the US.  You may have noticed them in your city or town already.  Since 2006, according to this article, we have resettled 32,000 Burmese refugees (mostly Christian with some Muslims slipped in) and expect another 18,000 this year.

We’ve written many times about the Burmese but since we have so many new readers I thought this article had some useful information about the Patriot Act and the what is known as the ‘material support for terrorism provision’ and how it can be waived. 

Thanks to a new U.S. policy, Nid Paw hopes to become one of 18,000 Burmese refugees allowed to settle in the United States in 2008. Before the change in law, the Patriot Act had barred refugee status for those who had provided “material support” to organizations on the State Department terrorist list. Because many Burmese refugees had lived in regions where ethnic armies have fought for independence against government troops for decades, they were typically denied entry simply for giving food, water or housing to guerrilla fighters - even if under duress.

In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security recognized that Burmese refugees were unlikely to be terrorists and waived the material support clause, opening the door to an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees living in nine camps along the Thailand-Burma border.

But the change also makes Nid Paw and other refugees uncertain about the lives they will leave behind and the problems they will face with a different culture, language and educational system, and an economy that is likely to offer no better than a minimum-wage job.

Besides the information on terrorism and the situation in Burma, it was interesting to see that the Burmese really hope to return to a democratic Burma someday.   Chances are slim because most refugees in America won’t make much more than minimum wage, so the cost alone would be prohibitive.

Nid Paw is unsure how she will arrange travel documents to return to Thailand. Refugees must wait five years before applying for green cards, and even then many lack the funds to return.

Using our search function for ‘Burmese refugees’ here is the archive for previous posts on this group.

Canada rejects Christian Iraqi refugees

While Canada is busy taking Muslim refugees with no links to Canada like the Rohingya, it is also busy rejecting applications from Christian Iraqis with extended family living there according to this article in the Toronto Star:

Azad Sarkissian’s Armenian great-grandparents settled in Iraq more than a century ago, and none of their descendants has stepped on Armenian soil since.

His sister and her family fled the violence in Iraq and are living precariously as United Nations-recognized refugees in Jordan. Sarkissian, in Toronto, has tried and failed three times over the past six years to bring them to Canada through a refugee resettlement application sponsored by the Assyrian Methodist Church of Canada.

But they were startled and angered by the latest response by a Canadian visa officer in Damascus, who said the family should go to Armenia instead.

 Since when do refugee officials tell people to go back to where their ancestors came from?

German churches lead the way in settling Iraqi Christians

An article in Spiegel adds some depth to the story we’ve been following about Germany (here, here and here).

According to Bishop Wolfgang Huber, the head of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Christians in Iraq face violence that is the equivalent of “ethnic cleanings and genocide in other places.”

Huber has quietly joined forces with representatives of the Catholic Church to campaign for the establishment of a German humanitarian assistance program, and his efforts have apparently met with success. This week Erika Steinbach, human rights spokeswoman for the CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU) joint parliamentary group, plans to argue for a contingent solution that would involve the rapid acceptance of a large number of refugees in Germany.

Previous articles referred only to “churches” and I wondered which churches were involved. The Evangelical Church and the Catholic Church were involved at their highest levels. But the Lutheran Church is not mentioned. Angela Merkel’s government is cooperating:

The Interior Ministry has already taken an important humanitarian step. In a decree dated May 15, 2007, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) ordered that asylum already granted to Iraqis should not be revoked “for the time being.”

There are about 2,500 Iraqi refugees now in Germany. So they will be able to stay.

In a few days, however, there will be far more at stake within the Human Rights Commission in the German parliament, the Bundestag. The churches want lawmakers to guarantee the long-term right of asylum and settlement for a much larger number of refugees — between 20,000 and 30,000 Christians who are part of the educated upper and middle classes in Iraq.

This is the first I’ve read of the Christians being upper and middle class. I know that many of the translators who have been threatened and killed are Christian. In this time of political correctness it takes some guts for the Germans to specify that they want Christian refugees. They are very wise to do so, but they have plenty of experience with problems created by the Muslims who live there, such as honor killings, and so they are learning from experience and asking for refugees who have a good chance of assimilating.

 Hat tip: Insubria

Germany still wants Christian Iraqi refugees; that’s still a “hitch”

Germany has been talking about taking thousands of Iraqi refugees since March — we posted on this here, here and here. But they want Christian refugees, and that presents a problem to the multiculturalists of Europe. Spiegel reports that 

the CDU [Christian Democratic Union, the ruling party] envisions bringing a large group (possibly as many as 10,000) of non-Muslim refugees to Germany with the understanding that they would not be treated as asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in Germany, and Steinbach said that it is unrealistic to think that Christian refugees from Iraq would ever be able to return. For this reason, their ultimate integration in Germany should be supported.

Members of Yazidis and Mandaean religious minorities would also be among those allowed in, according to the party’s proposal. The CDU argues that, in contrast to Muslim refugees from Iraq, religious persecution makes it unlikely that Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans would ever by able to return.

Makes sense, right? The non-Muslims are in a different kind of situation from the Muslim refugees, so they should be treated differently. Not to the UN it doesn’t.

Whether the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR would agree to the CDU plan, however, is unclear. As a rule, the UNHCR is unwilling to divide up refugees for resettlement based on their religious beliefs. Deputy CDU floor leader Arnold Vaatz, though, said on Wednesday that he would like to see the UNHCR take the issue of possible return into consideration. Such a criterion could open the door for Germany to accept a group of refugees that was overwhelmingly non-Muslim.

I don’t really understand this last part — why taking return into consideration would allow Germany to accept Christians. What is clear, though, is that the German government will have to jump through hoops to take in Christian refugees. And it is also clear the UNHCR is insane. Sometimes I think just the word “Christian” makes European secularists lose their minds.

UPDATE: Here is a story from FrontPage Magazine that may show us why Germans prefer Christian Iraqi refugees. Even if they are culturally different from Germans, Iraqi Christians are not going to engage in honor killings!

Iraq could be designated officially “religiously unfree”

Eli Lake writes in the New York Sun:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is split along party lines over whether to designate Iraq as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom….

The commission yesterday sent a letter to Secretary of State Rice, saying, “We remain seriously concerned about religious freedom conditions in Iraq. The commission is traveling to the region later in the month and plans to issue its report and recommendation on Iraq in the near future, including a recommendation concerning the appropriate designation of Iraq this year under the International Religious Freedom Act.”

The writer interviewed Nina Shea, a longtime advocate for religious freedom and other human freedoms and a member of the commission, whom I greatly respect.

“I have been very concerned with the plight of religious minorities in Iraq,” Ms. Shea said in an interview. “This is one of the most intolerant places in the world for religious minorities. Half the Christians and half the Yazidis are believed to have fled Iraq since 2003. Six hundred thousand Christians have fled the country. There are about 500,000 Yazidis left. Eighty-five to 90% of the Mandeans have left,” she said.

Ms. Shea added, though, that reliable data on this question was hard to come by. She said that was one of the reasons the commission would be traveling to Damascus this month, to conduct more interviews with persecuted religious minorities forced to flee Iraq. “I wasn’t satisfied with our findings on this in the end,” she said. “We want to go Syria and learn more. Part of the problem is there are not many good reports out there.”

Ms. Shea was particularly worried about the status of Iraqi Christians who are forced to flee inside Iraq to internally displaced persons camps. “It is not a well-known fact that the government has instated a food ration coupon. When you become internally displaced, your food ration card is cut off. … I think it is incumbent on the Maliki government to provide food for these people,” she said….

While the outcome of the fight over Iraq inside the commission is in doubt, it may spur the White House to pressure the Iraqi government to provide more services for displaced Christians. “I think the Bush administration should be doing a lot more and should make keeping these small minorities in the country a priority,” Ms. Shea said. “Historically Iraq has been a pluralistic mosaic and these minorities are generally well educated and politically moderate. They help advance democracy and freedom in that country. It will be a Pyrrhic victory to have stabilized Iraq only to find it fanatically intolerant of Christians and other non-Muslim religions.”

I look forward to the commission’s report when they visit the region.

Congressional testimony on Iraqi refugees

A representative of the Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops testified before a congressional subcommittee on May 1. The group resettles 15,000 to 20,000 refugees in the U.S. each year. She recommended action in four areas:

The Administration and Congress must increase efforts to deliver basic humanitarian assistance to Iraqi refugees.  Not only will this require the provision of more funds, but it also will require more diplomatic initiatives to ensure that the global community also contributes much needed assistance;

The Administration must step up efforts to make available resettlement opportunities for vulnerable Iraqi refugees, both in the United States and in other countries; 

Special attention must be paid to extremely vulnerable populations, including unaccompanied refugee minors, women heads-of-households, and other groups; 

Specific needs, such as health services (including mental health), education, and basic food and shelter, must be addressed.   Protection within host countries is also deteriorating, as refugee families without formal legal status remain at risk.   

This is the typical mindset of resettlement agencies. They work in the humanitarian field and see everything through that lens. Of course, there is much to agree on — we should be aiding the refugees in Syria and Jordan. But the only solutions are humanitarian ones in their eyes — resettlement or continuing aid where the refugees are now. Here is how the idea of repatriation is dealt with:

None of the families I spoke with in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey or Syria indicated that they thought they would ever be able to return to Iraq. Even if they do with to return, prospects do not look bright, as it is unsafe to return to Iraq anytime in the near future.

This is what the UN survey we reported on a couple of days ago indicated also. I want to know why. Last October and November refugees were returning in the tens of thousands. Did it turn out so badly for them that their fellow refugees figure they can never go home? I haven’t seen any reports of what happened to the returnees.

This idea that 90 percent of Iraqi refugees surveyed, and all of the families the testifier spoke to, thought they could never go back to Iraq, is simply not credible. It sounds like an idea that is to be planted in the minds of members of Congress and the Bush administration, and whatever public is interested. Why?

I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that it gives the resettlement agencies a huge job to do with all the government funds and expansion of the agencies that entails. It makes them very important. And it sets in cement the idea the war in Iraq is lost to chaos and terror.

I don’t think all of these NGO people necessarily think this out. But that is their mindset. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were deliberately bending the truth. Here is an indication of their mindset, given after the usual criticism of how few Iraqi refugees we have taken: 

Mr. Chairman, we are capable of meeting this number [the 60,000 per year the organization is calling for], but it would require a larger commitment of diplomatic and financial resources. In fact, there is precedence in U.S. history for staging a large resettlement program for specific populations. For example, in 1975, near the end of the Vietnam War the United States resettled close to 135,000 Vietnamese refugees.  During the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) in 1992, at least 10,000 persons were interviewed and processed each month. These efforts helped save thousands of lives.  In response to the refugee crisis in Kosovo, the United States processed and admitted over 14,000 refugees within a six-month period.

I see the parallel with Vietnam frequently. It is not a good analogy. We withdrew from Vietnam, leaving the people who had helped us to a terrible fate, as well as those who were simply on the wrong side. There was no possibility of helping them within Vietnam. But we are still fighting in Iraq, and our goal is to make the country a safe place. To adopt a policy that all of the refugees have to resettled elsewhere would be to give up our goal. There are many people who do not believe we can achieve that goal, but that is not our official government policy.

There is the further consideration that some of the refugees are our enemies. We know that many of Saddam’s supporters fled Iraq before, during and after our invasion. They are among the refugees in Syria and Jordan. Therefore vetting would-be refugees cannot be done casually or quickly. Those Kosovo refugees brought in so quickly turned out to include a number of terrorists.

The testimony is too long to cover fully here. I do want to quote part of the testimony on the Christian refugees:

Legislation enacted into law in January of 2008 makes religious minorities a special priority for resettlement in the United States, yet to date the Administration has not announced implementation of special processing for this group.  Religious communities here have come forward with lists of families known to have fled Iraq, but to date the only processing available to them is either through UNHCR referral or access through lengthy and burdensome family-based procedures.   

All of us hope that resettlement to a third country is not the long-term solution for the plight of religious minorities in Iraq.  These ancient communities deserve the right to remain in their homeland and maintain their religious identity.  The Holy See continues to urge protection for religious minorities within Iraq.   There is no doubt, however, that for some, resettlement outside of the region may be their best option.

This is the only mention that I saw in the testimony of resettling people back in Iraq.

It seems to me that some coordination between refugee organizations and the Defense Department would be in order. Or whatever agency of the government is working on rebuilding in Iraq. Has anyone tried to come up with a plan for enabling Christians to return safely? Or figuring out what conditions are needed to allow large numbers of refugees to go home? I am always faulting the NGOs for emphasizing resettlement, but this is really not their fault: it is what they do. It is the government’s fault for not dealing with the refugee problem in a larger context.

Sign a petition to help Iraqi Christians

We’ve reported on Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International (CSI) as part of a delegation that went to Jordan to check out the condition of Iraqi Christian refugees there. Now Fr. Roderick has alerted us to an effort by his group to bring the Iraqi Christians to the attention of the Bush administration and the UN. He wrote:

Iraq’s ancient Aramaic-speaking Christian community is facing a grave crisis that will ultimately impact other Christian communities in the Near East….

I visited with refugees in Jordan and Lebanon recently. It was obvious that they had been specifically targeted by Islamic extremists because they are Christians. In Iraq, they live with the daily threat of bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, vandalism, discrimination, extortion, and even death. The persecution comes from all sides — Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish extremists. Iraqi Christians are in urgent need of help.

Here is the petition he hopes will gain attention for these persecuted Christians:

Dear President Bush,

With each attack it is becoming more evident that an unexpected casualty of the war is finally surfacing: Iraq’s Christian community is facing extinction.

As a result of religious persecution, ongoing national instability and death threats, approximately 400,000 Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.  Many of the 600,000 Christians who remain in Iraq are internally displaced.

The United States, having powerful leverage with government leaders in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in the north, is in a position to guarantee the survival of Iraq’s endangered Christians and other religious minorities.

I’m asking you to use the power and influence of the U.S. government to defend religious liberty in Iraq and create conditions that allow displaced Christians and other non-Muslim minorities to return to their homeland and live and worship in peace.

Please encourage the U.S. government to work towards developing a secure homeland province for religious minorities in Iraq.  The United States, together with United Nations agencies, should facilitate the voluntary return and resettlement of refugees and internally displaced persons after effective security measures are taken.

Sincerely,

We urge you to sign the petition. It asks for the right action. We want to see the ancient Christian communities in Iraq saved. but that might not be possible. In lieu of that, Christians need their own homeland within Iraq. Fr. Roderick wrote that it is Islamic extremists who have targeted Christians. As we pacify Iraq and make it safe for ordinary Muslims, we need to make it safe for ordinary Christians (and other religious minorities) also.

Will Germany take Iraqi Christians or is that unfair?

We recently reported on churches in Germany calling on their government to take in up to 30,000 Christians who had fled Iraq. A German website says:

Negotiations are underway within the German government and parliament, to sort out numbers and procedures for such a resettlement program, and there is political consensus that swift action is urgently needed.

 

Not so fast. The radical Green Party objects.

 

Germany’s Green party endorses the plan, but says opening the gates only for Christians is hypocritical. Volker Beck, a senior Green party lawmaker, criticized Germany’s ruling coalition for being willing to take in Christians from Iraq, but not other refugees.

 

“We have to help everybody who is persecuted and cannot say these are our Christian brothers and sisters, and for others with a different identity we don’t care,” Beck said.

 

The article pointed out that Christians are under attack in Iraq from Sunnis and Shiites. Churches have been bombed, priests have been killed, women and children massacred. But why should that entitle them to special treatment? I guess if you’re a radical egalitarian it doesn’t. Everyone is the same, nobody should be treated differently. Even if one group is far more endangered than the other. They don’t explain, though, how they plan to “help everybody who is persecuted” – bring a few hundred million persecuted people from around the world to Germany?  Unfortunately, the churches don’t have a backbone to speak of:

 

The churches say they share this view, but that first they have to push for what can be achieved politically.

 

No wonder the churches are losing members. They can’t even stand up for their fellow Christians when radicals attack.  I don’t know enough about German politics to make a prediction; I just hope the Greens’ point of view is seen for the foolishness it is.