Christians abandoning Iraqi city of Mosul

By HISHAM MOHAMMED ALI

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Iraq is finding that it can’t even pay Christians to return to the troubled city of Mosul.

The government is offering displaced Christian families up to $1,300 if they return to their homes. The government has also boosted the number of security forces in the city by 35,000 and pledged to make additional resources available if members of the Christian community come back.

But for many of the 2,000 families — about half the city’s Christian population — who fled Mosul after the killing of two Christian women last month, it’s simply not enough. They fear that they will become the next targets of Muslim extremists in the area.

Safa Nathir Kamu, a 42-year-old engineer who fled to Erbil province, about 40 miles east of Mosul, said neither money nor talk of security would prompt him to return.

“We would like to go back home,” Kamu said. “We need security, but unfortunately security in Mosul is nothing more than pictures on TV.” The U.S. military has blamed al-Qaida sympathizers for targeting Christians in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province and a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.

Targets of violence

Of course, Christians, most of whom are either Assyrians, Chaldeans or Catholics, aren’t the only ones who have suffered from violence in recent years, But they have been particular targets. Many had long since fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria and rural sections of the Nineveh plains.

Following the latest attacks, Mosul deputy governor Khasro Goran promised that “tough security procedures (were) in place.”

But the steps have done little to ease the fears of Mosul’s Christian community.

“Government procedures are not good enough,” said Qriyaqus Mansur Gorgis, the chief of Bet Nahrain, an Assyrian party in Mosul. “It’s true that there is a heavy security presence in the city, but Christians are still targeted. So what’s the use of (added security)?” The latest round of attacks aimed at Christians has also reopened the long-standing debate between Christians and Kurds over whether Iraq’s minorities should have autonomous administrative areas of their own. Some Christians, along with minority groups, believe that the creation of an autonomous administrative region in Nineveh is the only way they can be assured of political power and protection from future attacks.

Minority groups voiced alarm earlier this month when the Iraqi parliament voted to guarantee six of the 400 provincial council seats to small religious and ethnic minority groups — a number they felt was too small.

“Autonomy is the sole way out of these crises,” said Romeo Hakari, the leader of an Assyrian political party in Mosul.

X Hisham Mohammed Ali is a reporter in Iraq who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization headquartered in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.