Iraq: Refuge Lost; Archbishop Kidnapped

Elizabeth Kendal
ASSIST News Service

March 6, 2008
http://www.crosswalk.com

A call to pray for Iraq’s besieged remnant Christians

AUSTRALIA -- Iraq's indigenous Assyrian-Chaldean Christian population has halved over the course of the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands have been driven out of their homes in the Shi'ite south and the Sunni centre through violent, systematic religious-ethnic cleansing and terror. They are now struggling to survive, either as refugees outside the country, or as internally displaced people (IDPs) in northern Iraq where there is an established Assyrian Christian community in the historic Assyrian homeland of Upper Mesopotamia (the Nineveh Plains around Mosul). Northern Iraq was once the most secure and stable region of Iraq, but is no longer.

In mid-2006 American forces drove al-Qaeda out of the Sunni centre. Those terrorists relocated and consolidated in northern Iraq and now openly describe Mosul as the 'cradle of the Islamic State of Iraq' (Jamestown Foundation, Terrorism Monitor, 27 February). For 18 months now, Islamists in Mosul have been terrorising the Christian community, bombing churches and kidnapping and assassinating religious leaders. Through this strategy they aim to remove the community's leadership, crush the community's spirit and ultimately drive Christianity out of Iraq.

On Friday 29 February, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho (65) was leaving Mosul's Holy Spirit Cathedral after celebrating the rite of the Way of the Cross when his car was ambushed by Islamic terrorists. In a premeditated and highly organised attack, Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped while his driver, Faris, and bodyguards, Rami and Samir, were shot and killed. Compass Direct reports that Faris, Rami and Samir each leave behind a wife and three children. Catholic News Agency reports the kidnappers have demanded a $1.8 million ransom for Archbishop Rahho.

According to Compass Direct, Archbishop Rahho had been under constant attack from Islamic militants trying to extort money. The day before he was kidnapped, his home was attacked and vandalised by militants demanding money, which the Archbishop refused to pay. Father Bashar Warda, Dean of St Peter's Seminary in Erbil, told Compass that the stress of the situation has weakened the Archbishop's heart and he now requires medication. 'His health is one of the issues that concerns us because it is not good, and his medicine is not with him,' Fr Warda told Compass. 'Prayer is needed.'

The war has slowly moved north leaving polarised -- some say 'stabilised' -- communities in its wake. Now war looms over northern Iraq like a dark storm waiting to break. When war erupts it will dwarf all Iraq's conflicts to date. It will be centred around the battle for oil-rich Kirkuk. It will involve Kurdish separatists, Turkish nationalists, Arab Sunnis, Arab Shi'ites, nationalists and Islamist jihadists, those who want to dismember Iraq and those who want to control Iraq as a whole -- all against each other.

Militants are amassing funds and jostling for supremacy in these days of escalating terror which are a prelude to the coming war. Unfortunately Iraq's Christians do not have oil, gas, precious minerals or control of drugs or geo-strategic territory -- things that generally buy help in this materialistic age of the competing empires in which we live. They do, however, have a merciful, sovereign Almighty Father. Iraq's Christians need our prayers.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR

* Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, that our Almighty God and Father will guard his body and soul and that the Holy Spirit will counsel, comfort and sustain him, fixing his eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of his faith. (Hebrews 12:2) May God mercifully return him to the church to spare them 'sorrow upon sorrow'.

'Indeed he [Epaphroditus] was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.' (Philippians 2:27 NIV)

* God to preserve and sanctify the Church in Iraq so that it will grow in grace for a blessed future. 'Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.' (Hebrews 12:3 NIV)

* God to command heavenly and earthly forces to protect and rescue Iraq's threatened Christians. 'It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.' (Psalm 118:8 NIV)