Guardian: The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath can be seen in hindsight as the greatest catastrophe to strike the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East since the Mongol invasions. In some ways it was worse. The Mongol invasions had as a side effect the postponement for about 50 years of the collapse of the Crusader kingdoms. The invasion of Iraq contributed nothing to the safety of any Christian community anywhere.
The hideous convulsions that followed have been dreadful for everyone in the region, but nobody has suffered more than the Christians, persecuted alike in Sunni and Shia states. In the nations that are not at war, they are tolerated but oppressed; in the Gulf, most Christians are servants, abominably treated. Their religion must be practised in secret, with converts threatened with death. In Iran, a missionary or a pastor is hanged from time to time as an exercise in public morality.
In the states where war rages, every man’s hand is against them. TheChristian population of Iraq was more than a million in 2003. Now it is less than a third of that size, with perhaps half that number in Kurdistan, which is functionally independent of the Shia government anyway. They are not coming back. Nor can they feel safe in Kurdistan. It was Sunni Kurds who did much of the killing in Turkey’s attempted genocide of the Armenian Christians 100 years ago, and both sides remember this.
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