US support seen
as 'disaster' for Christian minority in Iraq
11, 23, 04
Christians and ethnic minorities
face the most strategic imminent danger from insurgents, according
to analysts meeting in Washington DC this week. Jihadist forces
aim is to eliminate from Iraq those they see as the kufr (unbelievers)
from Iraq, says Middle East expert Walid Phares.
The claim came as representatives
of Iraq's largest Christian minority, the Chaldo-Assyrians, plus
leaders from Iraq's smaller ethnic minorities and human rights
groups met on Capitol Hill seek special recognition and protection
from militants.
James Rayis, vice-chair
of the American Bar Association's International Law Section on
the Middle East said that minority groups have faced ill-treatment
throughout history, but the
current attacks are because of perceived ties to the West.
Iraq's non-Islamic minorities,
which number over one million and include Chaldo-Assyrians, Mandaeans,
Roma, and Yazidi have existed in the region several thousand
years before the spread of Islam in CE 600.
The occupation of Iraq
by US forces and the birth of the Iraqi insurgency have led to
a particularly brutal rise in attacks, murders, kidnapping and
the destruction of property directed against indigenous Christian
minorities, says UPI and World Peace Herald.
Nearly 40,000 Chaldo-Assyrians
have fled Iraq in the last few months, according to the US Coalition
for Human Rights.
Church bombings in Assyrian
neighbourhoods of Baghdad and Mosul in August and October 2004,
mortar attacks, raids against Christian homes, and forced conversions
have also contributed to the unease of a community that has increasingly
felt itself under siege by militants.
At least one militant group,
The Islamic Mujahideen, has demanded that all Mandaeans convert
to Islam, leave country, or be killed.
Samer Shehata of Georgetown
University's Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies traces the
current mistreatment of ethnic Christians to the rise over the
last two decades of 'militant sectarianism' and 'Islamist politics'
as Western and oppositionist vehicles for criticizing Saddam
Hussein's secular regime.
But he warns against the
idea that minority groups should appeal specifically to the West.
'The US is the kiss of death anywhere in the Middle East. Obtaining
help from the United States, even if your claim is legitimate,
is the quickest way to discredit it', declared Shehata.
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