“We hope the Pope puts his diplomatic machine to work 100%”

This is a full transcript, in the original English, of my interview with Metin Rhawi, from Suroyo TV and the European Syriac Union, regarding the importance of Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq. Excerpts of this interview were used here and here.

How important is this visit for the Christians in Iraq?

The Christians in Iraq, we have good knowledge about what they are thinking, and regarding this visit many people find it important, of course, because they belong to the Catholic Church, they are Chaldeans or Syriac Catholics, and that gives them a possibility to see their supreme leader in faith. But at the same time there are also clear voices from the same community who have reservations. 

We know the situation of our people, the Christians in Iraq. We are out in the diaspora, we have lost everything, it is about existing or not in their homeland. Since Daesh no rights have been acknowledged. We are happy that they are talking a bit more about the Yazidis now, and also remembering that there were Christians who suffered very much, and so they are also mentioned, but we have lost properties, our land, our cities, our villages, our rights and there has also been a very bad influence in the civil society, with people thinking that they do not actually need the Christians, they are not part of the system, part of the culture, and also some voices from Muslim leaders asking why the Pope should come to Iraque, since he is an infidel. 

Of course, Al-Khadimi and Barham Salih have expressed their gratitude and they are happy he is coming, they are doing their best and trying to show a good face, but both sides exist, in general, among the society, and also among the Christians. Some are very happy, but others are raising issues. We have been victims of genocide for over 100 years. The last big genocide was in 1915, prior to that, 1895 and then Daesh 2014. Nobody demanded acknowledgement or liability for what happened then and now. Rights do not exist. Nobody talks about the possibility of educating our children in our language, the right to be Christian and if we want to produce and consume alcohol it should not be a problem, but instead we see bombing of the stores that sell alcohol in Baghdad. So there are many rights that have been left out and it seems to those people that the Pope should ask about this situation before coming here and making sure that the rights should be acknowledged and given to the Christians, the Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs, because it gives some kind of legitimacy to the Baghdad regime, as if they had been successful in dealing with this sort of thing. But obviously the Pope will be having diplomatic discussions with them, I believe. 

But of course we know the Vatican has always had a very pragmatic approach to diplomacy, and have in fact been able to achieve successes and rights precisely through dialogue with regimes that are not always friendly, such as China.

Obviously, the Pope’s administration is very powerful and he is in a position that he can, indirectly, influence some foreign ministries. Obviously, the countries that are Catholic, and proud of it, listen to the Pope when he has something to say, we know that! That is why we, as the European Syriac Union have not expressed reservations about this visit. We think it is good, it is very important that he visit our homeland, because some of our people belong to his church, they are faithful to his church, and to him, and he should be asking about their rights. We hope that he will do that, we understand also that he is not a leader of a country who has an army to invade, or to impose sanctions, but we know that he has the capacity, when he wants to, to draw a line in the sand that should not be crossed. We hope that is his intention, because we see a lot of concern from the Pope and the cardinals and bishops around him have expressed this, that Christianity should not vanish from the Middle East, from Iraq. They are trying to do their best, but their strongest weapon is prayer... But we know that he has diplomacy and we believe that he will use it, of course. 

I am trying to show you the full picture. There are people on the ground with both opinions. I know that in Baghdedi and Bartella for three months a choir has been practicing singing hymns in Italian and in Latin, as well as in Arabic and Syriac, to show that they are proud to be Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean, they have their own language, but they belong to Iraq at the moment, they are Iraqi and they are also Catholics. 

Disunity has always been a problem for Christians in the Middle East. Following the persecution by the Islamic State, has the situation improved?

If you look internally, when it comes to Christianity, the persecution woke us up from this strange dream that we are different empires living on the ground. In fact we are hospitalised on the ground, we are close to dying on the ground, but still the church leaders are not trying to find us a common line on the ground for Iraq. The Patriarchs and leaders of the different churches should cooperate much more. They are all Christian, but they have the same roots, they are the same people, there is no doubt that they are the same community, but they are divided in different "isms", when it comes to faith some are Catholics, some are Orthodox. They should have done much more.

Watching the political leaders, I can see that they are trying, but the ones who have more power, with seats in Parliament, consider that they are big enough to decline any interest that does not benefit them directly, they are not thinking as a community, but rather as parties. We are still divided, unfortunately, in that sense. It is tough to say that, it hurts, but it is the reality.

There are many reasons for the Pope not to visit at the moment. A recent bombing in Baghdad, the pandemic… The Pope has personally insisted on going. In your opinion is he being foolish, brave, or both?

We have seen in the news that even the previous Pope has expressed his fear and called upon Pope Francis to be careful and maybe not visit because of the security, and the Pandemic. I think that the Pope is not stupid, he is not foolish. He is doing a very good thing to show that he is with his people and that he has interests in Iraq because of the people and because the societies in the Middle East are based on faith and religion and he is a leader that mush show that he is close to his people. And he is doing that and we should really give him credit for that.

We hope he will get home safe and secure, and I think that will be arranged, I am not worried that something might happen to him. His faithful love him, and they won't get too close because of Covid. I think all this will be respected, and he knows how much this means to his people, because even if some say he should not visit before rights are guaranteed, there is a part of the community that is really insisting, and rightly so, that he is showing courage and showing that he is with them, that he knows that they exist there and that nobody should be able to force them out. So much so that he is even willing to visit them himself. It is an act of being with his people, and that is good, and we should give him credit. 

But of course, above all, we really hope he will run his diplomacy machine to work 100%, because it is a very critical situation, in Iraq and in the Middle East in general. 

In Iraq there are about 300 thousand Christians from different churches, of the Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac people today. So, from being about 4 million 20 years ago, maybe more, to 1.8 million in 2003, or 1.5, according to the figures, now people say 200 thousand, others say 300 thousand, so we can see that it is like 10% left. We are not far away, in time, it could be in our lifetimes... This is frightening, and we need to be awake and I think the Pope is acting on that. 

"Nineveh is not a 'disputed area', it is our home"

Metin Rhawi

This is a full transcript, in the original English, of my conversation with Metin Rhawi, of the European Syriac Union, about the situation in the Ninevah Plain and expectations for after the liberation of Mossul. The interview was used for several articles on the subject.

Esta é uma transcrição completa, no inglês original, da minha conversa com Metin Rhawi, da União Siríaca Europeia, sobre a situação na Planície de Nínive e as expectativas para depois da libertação de Mosul. A entrevista foi usada para uma série de artigos sobre o assunto.

Could you please introduce yourself and your organization?

I am head of Foreign Affairs for the European Syriac Union. What we do basically is advocacy for the Chaldean/Syriac/Assyrian people in our homeland, Old Mesopotamia, or Bet-Nahrain, as we call it, today Iraq, Turkey, Syria, parts of Lebanon and parts of Iran.

Our work is basically trying to raise the issue and the situation for this minority who have been the indigenous people of this region for the past 8.000 years or something. The situation for Christians is currently very crucial, losing almost everything they had, many having gone abroad.

Originally I was born in the Southeast of Turkey, in Midyat, and I belong to the Syriac Orthodox Church. But among our people we also have the Chaldean Church, the Apostolic Chuch of the Assyrians, the Maronite, the Melkite Church and the Orthodox... So there are many denominations.

How familiar are you with the situation in Iraq? Do you travel there frequently?

I have been in Iraq four times in the past one and a half years, and once to Syria. Unfortunately I couldn't make more trips to Syria because they closed the border from Iraq, so we need to go through the regime controlled airports in Syria, and that is not possible for me because I have taken a stance against the regime in Syria.

So I am well informed and I have seen with my own eyes and I have a network of political parties, NGOs, different associations and military militias in Iraq.

Why is there so much division among Christians? I counted 12 political parties and several militias.

I don't know if you could necessarily call this division, these are political views of the current situation, or at least how to solve the current situation, and as within any country or nationality you have many political views, many parties, among our community we have also many parties, at least 13 or 14 parties, so even more than the ones you discovered, and five of them have their own militias. I think this is due to the fact that you have the Baghdad regime on one side and the Kurdistan Regional Government controlled by Kurdistan Democratic Party on the other. These local politics are benefiting from the situation when you have political groups which are split, rather than joining forces.

In this case they can, at any time, play the situation against each other and this is what we are facing, unfortunately they are giving us some kind of hope from different sides, and at the same time our community, and the political parties, are in really great need of doing something for the people who have been tossed around in different directions, in order to reach their goal, to give something to the people, some kind of security and hope for the future in their homeland.

Then you see the big policies between these big nations who are interfering, Iran with the Shia concept, Turkey with the Sunni concept, and the Syrian regime and the United States and Russia, so it is quite puzzling situation and you need to have all the facts, trying to understand why these communities are so divided.

But you would agree that it is negative for the aspirations of the community to have so much political division?

It is, in one sense, if you don't have a common strategy and agenda, of course it is. Today what we can see with these political parties, different members of the European Parliament, different political associations and foundations, and us, we have reached an agreement between all of them among the community to have some common demands for the Nineveh Plain.

For instance, we are starting to have the same agenda in some very important and common issues, and that is the positive thing today that I would like to focus on. But of course it is quite frustrating that there are so many different factions within a small community like ours, because from two million ten years ago, we are today close to 400 thousand. So we can understand that we should not be so divided, because we are losing the grip, while discussing among ourselves what to do as the next step.

After the liberation of Mosul, do you expect to see conflict between Baghdad and Kurdistan over the disputed areas?

As for the “disputed areas”, that is their term, but we don't agree with it... The Nineveh Plain is not a disputed area, even though Baghdad and Erbil many times tried to make it appear so, this is the land of our ancestors since many thousands of years back. Bartella city has been home to Syriacs since about 5,000 years before Christianity, so how can it be a disputed area?

But, having said that, what is actually happening on the ground today is that you can see the regime trying to take the Northeastern part of the Nineveh plain, and the Peshmerga controlling the Southeastern part, so they have already, more or less, in practice, split the region, so now for us as Christians it is very important to really make it obvious that the Nineveh Plain is not open to be divided by these two political powers of Baghdad and Erbil.

As for the future, whether they are going to have an armed fight, I don't know, that is difficult for us to say. Until now they have been quite good at talking, they respect each other, but you never know... They have had ISIS in their faces for two years, what will happen in the future is very difficult to say. But for us, at least, we know that they are interfering on the ground, in a region which belongs to us and which they call a disputed area.

However, you can also say this is a totally disputed area, because even Turkey talks about being involved, so it is quite a difficult situation...

Miliciana cristã acende velas numa igreja no Iraque

So can I gather that you would prefer to see the Nineveh Plains not directly under the control of Baghdad or Erbil, but autonomous?

The situation in all of Iraq and also in Kurdistan is a great lack of democratic process. It is still the strong people who make decisions, there is empowerment of powers which are already quite strong and the local minorities are more or less powerless. So what we need to do is work to empower the local minorities, like the Yezidis, like the Shabaks, the Turkmen and the Assyrians, in order to have this autonomous region together, with different provinces within it. Whether it is going to be connected to Baghdad or to Erbil… I think this is a question of what the law says in Iraq today. Obviously it should be closer to Baghdad, but with very good relations with Erbil.

In our opinion we should have an open book with each other as a province or autonomous region both with Erbil and Baghdad and explain that this region can be an autonomous region. The ministers’ council of Baghdad, two years ago, declared that the Nineveh Plain can be an autonomous region for the Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac community, but we have not seen anything more than talk. Erbil shows the same willingness: "If the community want their freedom and self-government in an autonomous region in the Nineveh plain, we will help them”, but still we cannot see more than one autonomous region and that is Kurdistan, and the rest is Iraq.

So we hope, really, that all this talk becomes real policy and for this we need the support of the United States and the European Parliament to support this region becoming an autonomous region, with the good help of Kurdistan and the very, very good help of Baghdad.

In the future, how it develops, I truly don't know, because you never know, in this region, what is going to happen a year from now, it is very difficult to say.

This scenario you described only seems to work if Kurdistan remains in Iraq. If Kurdistan becomes independent and the Christians are forced to choose between joining an independent Kurdistan or remaining in Iraq, what do you think the majority would choose?

I think it is very difficult today to say, and it would not be good for me to do that.

I think it is quite obvious that the Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac people are in great need of support from both places. Even if Kurdistan declare themselves an independent country and sovereign state, for us the issue is to have good relations with Kurdistan, as a country, and also with Iraq, as a country. In that case we would have borders with both Erbil and Baghdad, so for us that is the big policy of the local strong powers today, what they decide to do and how they decide to do it, unfortunately there is a risk that could go to civil war, of course, because it would be a civil war, Kurdistan is an autonomous region in Iraq.

So it is quite difficult. I don't know which side people would like to choose, because unfortunately we have bad experience today from both sides.

Many people tend to think of the time when Saddam was ruling the country as a more peaceful time than today, although they knew he was a dictator. So you are familiar with the situation in Iraq and you can understand that the situation today is not good. Everybody was treated very badly under Saddam, but today it is not everybody, but certain groups are treated worse than others, certain groups are not given democratic rights, certain groups are not being defended the right way, certain groups have to rely on themselves even if they are not powerful enough. And if you take their powers from them, more and more, their situation is going to be very frustrating.

The more recent waves of persecution of Christians in Iraq have come from the Islamic State, but I remember at the time the people said that the ones who had taken their houses, were not IS, they were their Arabic neighbours. So it would seem that in the more recent years the more severe persecution came from the Sunni majority, whether Islamic State or the local Arabs. But I have also spoken many Christians from the region, many of whom off the record, and I asked them if they trust the Kurds, despite the fact that they fled to Kurdistan and the Kurds were the only ones who seemed determined to fight IS on the ground. And many of them answered saying that they remember that the Kurds also persecuted them in the past, so they are cautious. Is this your feeling as well, is there a feeling of suspicion between the Christians and the Kurds, or is this something of the past...

When you are looking forward to the future and to establish something you have trust in, and believe in for the future, you calculate with the past and your accumulated knowledge of what happened.

Of course we have very, very bad experience from each other. Both Arabs, Sunni and Shia or Kurds. In the Ottoman Empire, when Iraq was part of it, there were also Kurds persecuting us, as well as Arab Sunnis and Arab Shia. So I don't know today if we need to bring all those fears with us into the future, but at least we should know that this happened, not forget it, but we should forgive and continue to build a future together, along with the people living there, because obviously we cannot expel the people from there, the majority living there are Arab Sunni or Arab Shia or Kurds, so what we have to do is reconciliation.

Igreja vandalizada no Iraque

This is really important and we are working with that as the European Syriac Union also, along with other communities there, it is important to trust in the future, to trust in each other, what the Kurds and the Peshmerga did during the Islamic State invasion of the Nineveh Plain… Of course without them we would probably have lost everything, so we have to be thankful for that. But at the same time we know that they could obviously have done more for us, they could be standing there in the frontline, they could have given us weapons to defend ourselves along with them and probably, together, we could have fought ISIS before they became stronger, but to go into that issue of how and for what reason did ISIS become stronger and have the possibility to become stronger, as they have been for the past two years, that is a question which will take us too long to answer... And there are many conspiracy theories to look into of course...

Obviously people on the ground, whether Sunni or Shia, have also hurt us and whether Kurds or Arabs, they have also hurt us, but we need to trust in each other in some way, because we will be neighbours anyway, we need to build a common future together and that can be done with respect and democracy. And that quality type of living today does not exist in Iraq, nor in Kurdistan, really, because you can feel the tension, I have been in Kurdistan many times, and you can feel the tension, where you feel that you are not a first rate citizen, because you are not Kurd, because you are Chaldean, Syriac or Assyrian. And because you don't feel you belong to a strong party, because parties dominate Kurdistan today. More than the government dominating Kurdistan, it is the KDP that dominates Kurdistan. And that is also an issue...

What we would like to have is Mr. Barzani should stand up and say OK, if this is what the Chaldean/Syriac/Assyrians want, this is not a disputed area, this is your area, we give it over to you, we can help you, in what way do you need help from us?

And the same thing from Baghdad, because they have a decision from their ministers’ council from two years ago, they should say the thing: This is what you want, tell us how we can help you.

And then, I think the European Parliament, the United States Government and even the Russians would understand that this is ok, this is a good situation where we can also be supportive and find common solutions.

Of the five different militias that I found in my research, the Nineveh Plain Forces, the Nineveh Plain Protection Units, Dwekh Nawsha, Qaraqosh Protection Committee and the Tiger Guards... Are some of these considered pro-Kurd and others Pro-Baghdad?

In the end, whether they like to say that or not, some of us must be more pro-the side that gives us the permission to be a military militia.

The Nineveh Plain Units answer to the Government of Baghdad, the Ninevah Plain Forces are from Peshmerga ministry, from the Kurdistan region. This is why we operate in different places. If we belong to Peshmerga, obviously we cannot move in the areas where Baghdad moves, and vice versa.

Dwekh Nawsha is unfortunately a very, very small group and there are also the Nineveh Plain Guards Protection Units from Barzani's side also, the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council. That is pro-Kurdistan, more obviously than the others.

Then you have the Syriac Falcons, newly established, by Salwon Momika, of the Syriac Democratic Union who was held hostage for almost two weeks recently, in fights. He established himself as a political party and also militia. The first movement within the Syriac Chaldean Assyrian group established in the liberated areas, and he faced problems, of course, and he was held captive, but now he was released.

But what is not working there, what we are obviously being stopped from, we made it clear to our militias, on behalf of the Syriac European Union, and along with Mr. Lars Adaktusson, that we need to find a common agenda for the military unification also, in order to become an army for the Nineveh Plain in the future. But of course neither Baghdad nor Erbil like this, and that is obvious. Maybe they don't like me to say that, but I will do it anyway.

Related: "Kurdish independence is necessary to avoid further atrocities"

Christians “cautiously joyful” with liberation of Nineveh Plains

This is a full transcript, in the original English, of my conversation with Swedish Assyrian journalist and activist Nuri Kino about the liberation of Qaraqosh and other Christian towns and villages in the Mossul region. Read the news story, in Portuguese, here.

Transcrição integral, no inglês original, da minha entrevista ao jornalista e activista sueco/assírio sobre a libertação de Qaraqosh e de outras vilas e aldeias cristãs na região de Mossul. A reportagem está aqui.

We have had conflicting reports about the situation in Qaraqosh. From your information, what is the situation on the ground?

The news regarding the Christians is that Bartella, a town of about 30 thousand inhabitants prior to ISIS, has been fully liberated. We have received videos and pictures of the church bells ringing. That is of course very satisfying.

When it comes to Qaraqosh we received pictures of the main hospital being liberated, the town hall buildings and also the Iraqi Army headquarters. But it is very hard to know if it is totally liberated or not. We are also receiving conflicting information about that.

I just spoke to two of the priests from Qaraqosh and they also have no full information, but the Iraqi army and some of the Christian forces are supposed to be inside Qaraqosh.

Two days ago we received information that it had been liberated. Then information came a couple of hours later saying that there were about 20 ISIS suicide bombers and snipers left in Qaraqosh and they were shooting people from the rooftops. Also, one of the biggest problems is the mines. There are a lot of mines around the city, both anti-personnel mines and street mines.

But we believe that Qaraqosh will be liberated today. [Saturday 21^st October]

How does that make you and other Christians feel?

Qaraqosh is about 70% Syriac Catholic and 30% Syriac Orthodox and I am Syriac Orthodox. For us there is no difference whether it is in southeast Turkey, where I was born, or in Syria or Iraq, or in Iran or in Lebanon. We are all the same nation, the same ethnicity, the same people with different names: Assyrian, Syriac, Chaldean...

Of course, after more than two years of ISIS in our home towns, we are very happy to see it, though we are also careful and cautious, because we never know how things will turn.

Look at what happened in Kirkuk yesterday... All of a sudden sleeping terrorist cells in Kirkuk started to hit the street, more than 20 suicide bombers. They also kidnapped some people and threatened to kill them, and battles are ongoing in Kirkuk, which is also a bit Iraqi city.

So I would say that we are cautiously joyful.

Also, after the liberation there is a lot of work to be done for our people to return to the Nineveh plane, where Bartella and Qaraqosh are. The Swedish MEP Lars Adaktusson is presenting a new resolution in the European Parliament about self-administration in the Nineveh Plane and two other provinces in Northern Iraq, so that these people can feel that they get their dignity back and rule their own areas, or at least get some power in the administrations, so that the inhabitants can feel confident to come back.

Also it is about dignity, so as to get their dignity back. The same thing is going on in Washington DC, there are political movements and political solutions – hopefully – so that people can move back.

In Iraq, before the fall of Saddam, approximately 1.3 million Christians lived there. After the fall of Mossul, we don't know, but we estimate that there are more not more than 250 thousand left.

So more than one million have already left the country, and people are emigrating every day, because they lost hope in the world leaders to protect them. But we do have some hope in what is happening these days, in the liberation of Nineveh and Mossul, and we also have hope in the political solutions that will be on the table over the coming weeks.

Are Christians afraid to be caught in between Baghdad and the Kurds, over who actually controls this region...

That has been going on since the fall of Saddam, it’s nothing new. It’s not a question of being afraid, we know it’s a fact, it’s been a fact for a decade now. So that is why we are asking for self-administration, so as not to be caught in the middle.

Will Bagdad and Kurdistan accept that idea?

Well we hope on the European Union and on Washington and the UN.

A little ringtone for your Saturday ... the church bells ringing in Bartella outside Mosul just liberated from #ISIS pic.twitter.com/qncchINW6Y

— Mindy Belz (@mcbelz) October 22, 2016