Iraqis Stay in Exile; Too Terrified to Return
By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
"Thousands of Christians are fleeing the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to escape a murder campaign by Islamic extremists intent on wiping out one of the oldest Christian communities in the world......
Some 11 Christians have been killed since 28 September leading to the present exodus. Most of the refugees are moving to Christian villages, schools and monasteries in Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital. “We left everything behind us. We took only out souls,” said Ni’ma Noail, a middle aged Christian civil servant, who has taken refuge with his three children in a room in a church in Bartila, a Christian village east of Mosul. He added, “Relatives in other cities and friends in Mosul, including Muslims, advised me to leave after recent events.”.....
The Christian community in Mosul is one of the oldest in the world and claims to have been founded by St Thomas. Many belong to the Chaldean or Assyrian churches but, even before the present wave of killings, the number of Christians in the city had halved from 20,000 to 10,000 and this remnant is now disappearing. In March the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paul Faraj Ranho, was kidnapped after celebrating mass and his body was later found in a shallow grave.....
The sectarian killings in Mosul are a setback to the Iraqi government’s effort to persuade the 4.2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the fall of Saddam Hussein that it is now safe to return. Of these, two million are refugees within Iraq and a further 2.2 million took refuge abroad, mostly in Syria and Jordan. So far only 20,000 families or 120,000 individuals have returned ......"
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