3,000 Christians flee Mosul 'killing campaign'

Sunday 12th October, 03:45 AM JST

BAGHDAD —

Hundreds of terrified Christian families have fled Mosul to escape Sunni extremist attacks that have increased despite months of U.S. and Iraqi military operations to secure the northern Iraqi city, local officials said Saturday.

The governor of northern Iraq’s Ninevah province, Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, said some 3,000 Christians have fled Mosul over the past week alone in what he called a “major displacement.” He said most have left for churches, monasteries and the homes of relatives in nearby Christian villages and towns.

“Of course al-Qaida elements are behind this campaign against Christians,” Kashmoula said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He called on the government to launch a fresh military offensive to chase al-Qaida in Iraq from his province, as the government has done elsewhere in the country.

While the Christian community in Iraq’s third-largest city has previously been targeted, local religious and political leaders say a new trend is emerging of assassinations and forced displacement based solely on religion.

“The Christians were subjected to abduction attempts and paid ransom, but now they are subjected to a killing campaign,” Kashmoula said.

The violence in Mosul is occurring despite U.S.-Iraqi operations launched over the summer aimed at routing al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgents from remaining strongholds north of the capital.

On Saturday, a convoy carrying an official from Iraq’s largest Sunni political party was targeted while traveling through Mosul, but no one was hurt, police said. However, a civilian and an armed man were killed in random gunfire in a Mosul market, said a policeman on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Iraqi police in the city located 360 kilometers northwest of Baghdad have reported finding the bullet-riddled bodies of seven Christians in separate attacks so far this month, the latest a day laborer found on Wednesday.

Father Bolis Jacob of Mosul’s Mar Afram Church claimed the death toll was even higher. He said he could not understand the attacks.

“We respect the Islamic religion and the Muslim clerics,” he said. “We don’t know under what religion’s pretexts these terrorists work.”

The Christian community has been estimated at 3% of Iraq’s 26 million people, or about 800,000 Christians, and has a significant presence in the northern Ninevah province. In Mosul, where Christians have lived for some 1,800 years, a number of centuries-old churches still stand.

Joseph Jacob, a professor at Mosul University, said there were nearly 20,000 Christians in the city before the 2003 U.S. invasion. But over half have since left for neighboring towns, or new countries, he said.

Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians since the U.S. invasion, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq. Attacks had tapered off amid a drastic decline in overall violence nationwide, but concerns are rising about the deaths this month.

Earlier this week, Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said he was worried about what he termed a “campaign of killings and deportations against the Christian citizens in Mosul.”

On Saturday, Bashir Azoz, a 45-year-old carpenter, said he was forced to flee his home in the city’s eastern Noor area after gunmen warned a neighbor the day before to leave or face death.

“Where is the government and its security forces as these crimes take place every day?” asked Azoz, who is now staying with his wife and three children in a monastery in the Christian-majority town of Qarqoush, about 40 kilometers east of Mosul.

“We only took with us our official documents and a few other essential things such as blankets, some clothing and dishes,” Azoz added.

Police said that militants on Saturday also blew up three abandoned Christian homes in eastern Mosul.

Christian leaders are also fighting for a political voice in Iraq. They are hoping the parliament will pass a law setting aside a number of seats for minorities such as Christians in upcoming provincial elections, fearing they could be further marginalized in the predominantly Muslim country.

Separately on Saturday, a U.S. soldier died when a bomb exploded near his vehicle near Amarah, about 320 kilometers southeast of Baghdad. The U.S. military said it was withholding the name of the deceased until it notified the soldier’s next of kin.

___

Associated Press writers Yahya Barzanji and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.

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Latest 15 of 19 Total Comments Show All

WilliB at 01:59 PM JST - 12th October

TokyoGas:

" Seems like Iraq needs military stongman to run the country. "

Yep, that would be another Sadam. The phantastic irony here is that the US leadership removed a relatively secular dictator and hoped that islamic clerics like Ali Al Sistani would help build an enlightend democracy.

The supreme idiocy of this policy is hard to surpass.

(Although an Obama presidency will make a valiant attempt to do just that...)
taniwha at 06:15 PM JST - 12th October

The de-stabalisation of Iraq was widely predicted prior to the 2003 invasion. However, the plan to invade and occupy Iraq had been a long time in the planning, years in fact, and well before 2001. There was really nothing to stand between the Bush administration and the plan they intended to action, except the Democrats and the European governments and they did absolutely nothing except prostrate themselves behind the idea to grab the oil seeing the US was going for it anyway.

As for Tony Blair's chummy support of Bush it was Chamberlain colluding with Hitler all over again.

Christians, Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis, and the rest of the groups definable by the ethnic and religious ties they share, and in no particular order, are all victims of the destabilization of their country. In short, the process of ethnic cleansing now underway is an effect of the balkanisation of Iraq caused by the invasion and continued occupation.

And none of it has been unforseen.
taniwha at 06:23 PM JST - 12th October

There will one day be an international tribunal to bring to justice those criminals who have destroyed Iraq. It is a war crime that in scale if not in degree of carnage parallels Hitler's invasion of Poland.
coulrophobic at 06:27 PM JST - 12th October

"The de-stabalisation of Iraq was widely predicted prior to the 2003 invasion."

Pretty much every scenario possible was outlined.

'Predictions' were cherry-picked after.

"...Democrats and the European governments and they did absolutely nothing except prostrate themselves behind the idea to grab the oil seeing the US was going for it anyway."

I haven't heard the 'no blood for oil' one in years.

How did the story end?

Did the US 'grab' all the oil?
taniwha at 07:11 PM JST - 12th October

Hey Coulro,

How you going?

Yes, the de-stabalization of Iraq is exactly the reason that ethnic cleansing is taking place. The killing of Christians in Mosul by Sunni is precisely an example of that!

Dude, I was on this board back before 2003, based in Japan and with a little free time. Actually right through 2000 until end of 2003. A bit of a sabbatical since then up until a month ago.

I was one of the first here to say outright prior to the invasion it would be a disaster, be unwinnable, destroy Iraq, further destabilize the ME and most likely culminate in Turkey and Iran involved in the conflict and eventual conflagration. That eventually it is likely to develop into a world war with the US being confronted by not only its self-determined adversaries Russia and China, but also Europe which would eventually form a Euro-block of a sort and have it out also. That the conflict could go nuclear at any stage, most likely when the US used some of their new nuclear devices on Iran targets.

The last stage hasn't happened - yet. But it is looking increasingly likely.
coulrophobic at 07:14 PM JST - 12th October

How did the story end? Did the US 'grab' all the oil?
taniwha at 07:25 PM JST - 12th October

How did the story end? Did the US 'grab' all the oil

No, well, yes and no, here's the funny bit. The US got some of the oil in Iraq at least, but the cost was their banks. Finance was so tight, they couldn't even stomach the threat of another field of military involvement so the gave North Korea, get this, they gave North Korea what it wanted. They took it off the list of the 3 biggest baddies.

Its probably worth considering also how the US has also lost a good chunk of their collective soul.
coulrophobic at 07:30 PM JST - 12th October

"No, well, yes and no"

Not very convincing.
taniwha at 07:33 PM JST - 12th October

Well, that's because I don't think I need bother convincing you, Coulro.
taniwha at 08:01 PM JST - 12th October

This is just further in response to your petulant protest that the predictions were 'cherry picked after the event'. Well, no, for the record that is totally incorrect, chump.

These sectarian killings, the topic of the above article, were so totally predictable that the warnings were given years ago back as far at least as the time of the invasion. I passed these warnings on myself in my posts on the JT boards.

I also posted and debated on JT that the war in Iraq would financially destroy the US before they managed to secure the oil reserves in the ME. The reason being the US was loaded with so much debt, its loans from Asia in particular would demolish the US if those countries ever decided to pull their investments out of the US. I posted all this in 2004 on JT repeatedly over that year.

I posted cyber-mountains of supporting evidence for all of the above claims I made on JT. I pointed out the reason the US was in Iraq was not to bring democracy, nor to avenge the Twin Towers, that was all bald lies as well as obfuscation. The real reason was in the first stage to gain strategic localities for military bases with the purpose of destroying all opposition (e.g. Iran) to its goal of controlling access to the ME oil and gas reserves. This would reap huge profits for the US corporates and most importantly the hope was to maintain the ascendancy of the US dollar.

'Hand picked predictions' you propose? Well, only in so far as I harvested the research of others (for mostly the analysis done by wsws.org). Those researchers were correct, and that meant that more than 90% of my 'predictions' on JT were also correct. Including who was going to be president in the last two elections - and most importantly why!

So dude, I came back. Just prior to the next election and as it turns out the next big depression (which I also warned was coming). If anyone has read the sources I have put up here they could also have made the same statements, and indeed may have. I've been away for almost 2 years so wouldn't know. I can tell you one thing, as you are not an International Socialist you probably make investments don't you? Like the stock market, currency markets, maybe commodities?

Acting according to the info that was in my posts, and doing it wisely of course, would have made you a bundle. Ironical isn't it. That would have been verification of the analysis I used, the 'cherry picked predictions' if you like.

Its all their in the JT archives. Enough said.
taniwha at 08:04 PM JST - 12th October

Actually the US dollar was not in "ascendancy" then, the word should be 'dominance'. That sentence should read so; "This would reap huge profits for the US corporates and most importantly the hope was to maintain the dominance of the US dollar.
WilliB at 08:08 PM JST - 12th October

taniwha:

" I posted cyber-mountains of supporting evidence for all of the above claims "

For "evidence", read "propaganda".
taniwha at 08:32 PM JST - 12th October

WilliB

For "evidence", read "propaganda".

Hahaha, I guess you never bother to look past your service manual, whatever that is.

Yeah well. Here's a list of the 'propaganda' I used regularly as evidence for pretty much every claim I ever made on JT - check them out, my old posts are still there in the JapanToday archives. I'd call these sources evidence myself.

These are from memory and starting with those I referred to the most descending to those referred to the least. The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (usually to point out the 'liberal lap doggyness' of its editorials and columns, The Economist, The Washington Post, Asahi Shimbun, Asia Times, The Economic Policy Institute (US), the International Monetary Fund reports (mostly for the press), The Australian Financial Review, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, The Japanese magazine Weekly Asahi.

Of course also, various government draft reports and UN reports (various) For analysis, yes, I did my own, but depended mostly on that from the WSWS.org which as I have already pointed out was pretty much always correct, as it has turned out.

You can argue if you want, but pal, the record is what it is. And you can just howl into the wind if you like.
SuperLib at 02:09 AM JST - 13th October

taniwha: I posted cyber-mountains of supporting evidence

Eh, I think most people probably ignored it. I honestly didn't know you've been here for so long. I thought you joined like 3 months ago.
taniwha at 06:35 AM JST - 13th October

Superlib

No, just a month ago.