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One of the most important and anticipated stops on Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq will be the Nineveh Plain, a geographic area in the north of the country around the city of Mosul. According to tradition, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is located in the plain, attacked and forced to flee in 2014 after the conquest of the region by the Islamic State. Across Iraq, Christians have been a discriminated and persecuted minority for decades, but attempts to protect their communities in recent years are complicated by the situation on the ground, where ethnic and religious rivalries and other factors such as demographics , for example, make reconciliation between populations particularly difficult.
the New York Times He described these difficulties by taking as an example the city of Bartella, an ancient Christian settlement on the Nineveh Plain where, however, the remaining Christians are only 3,000 out of a population of 18,000. In Bartella, the central government gave the local ecclesiastical authorities wide powers to try to preserve the Christian identity of the city. However, this has created considerable problems, because Bartella harbors another discriminated minority, the Shabak, an ethnic group with its own language that, like Christians, is discriminated against and persecuted by the Islamic State during the conquest. The privileges granted to Christians by the government have made relations very strained, as the Shabak now claim to be victims of double discrimination.
– Read also: The long-awaited and worrying visit of the Pope to Iraq
In the town of Bartella the Christian presence is centuries old: some of the churches were built more than 800 years ago, and the Christian presence has been constant for at least a millennium. But Bartella is also one of the historic settlement places of the Shabak ethnic group, which is officially Shiite Muslim, even if the creed differs slightly from Shiite orthodoxy. During the invasion of the Islamic State, which is Sunni and very orthodox, the Shabak were persecuted and forced to flee as Christians. However, it was the shabak, gathered in an armed militia, who liberated the people from the terrorist group a couple of years later.
This partly explains why, in Bartella, the majority of the Christians did not return after liberation. While writing theEconomistIn other areas liberated by Christian militias, such as the Nineveh Plain Protection Units, many more Christians have returned to settle in their old houses.
In Bartella, however, the majority of the current population is Shabak. Precisely for this reason, the central government has granted the local church a special privilege: that of having decision-making power over the constructive development of the city. In practice, the ecclesiastical authorities of Bartella can issue a binding opinion on the construction of new houses and new buildings, and on the concession and sale of land for new real estate projects. The same power has been given to the ecclesiastical authorities of another town, Qaraqosh, which the pope will visit on Sunday.
In Bartella the shabak accuse the ecclesiastical authorities of using this power to discriminate against them. One of the most notable examples is the veto imposed last November on the construction of a large shopping center on the outskirts of the city, which involved the construction of sports centers and new homes. “The project has been blocked by the church,” he told the New York Times Banham Lalo, a Catholic priest from Bertella. “People from other areas, from Mosul and Baghdad, would have bought those houses. It would have paved the way for demographic change. “
The demographic issue is one of the main problems, because the Shabak practice polygamy and are very prolific, unlike the Christians. Ali Iskander, who is the de facto mayor of the city, has three wives and 16 children and claims that many adult males in Shabak have between 15 and 20 children. Christian couples usually have one or two children. Iskander claims that the church does not grant him permission to buy land to build a house for his family. He also accuses church authorities of preventing some Shabak women from giving birth in a city hospital, to prevent newborns from being assigned Bartella citizenship.
The Christians, for their part, accuse the shabak of threatening their culture: “The main problem is the shabak officials, they want to change the identity of Bartella,” he told the magazine. New York Times Yacoub Saadi, Orthodox priest.
The situation of Bartella, in which two minorities find themselves living together in the same territory, is in many respects peculiar, but it exemplifies the difficulties of coexistence and reconciliation in an area where the brief conquest of the Islamic State has upset all balance.
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In Iraq, Christians continue to be discriminated against: before the 2003 US invasion, between 1.3 and 1.5 million Christians lived in the country: after the bloodiest phases of the war and subsequent persecutions By the Islamic State, an estimated less than 250,000 remain, many of whom are considered at risk and are considering emigrating as tens of thousands of other Christians have in recent years.
For Christians in Iraq it is more difficult to find work in the state administration, marriages between Christians and Muslims are not prohibited but are frowned upon, and children born of mixed marriages are automatically classified as Muslim. In the capital Baghdad, shops run by Christians are often the target of attacks and vandalism.
The government has made some attempts to accommodate the Christian community, for example, last year it declared Christmas a national holiday. The powers granted to the ecclesiastical authorities to Bartella are another example. However, none of these measures is sufficient to initiate effective reconciliation policies.
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