They also suffered violent attacks against their houses of worship.
Christians in Iraq are considered one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. They are the indigenous inhabitants of Mesopotamia, descendants of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Chaldeans, and hence they represent religious as well as ethnic minorities.
Various reports have indicated a deliberate targeting of districts with dense Christian population in Basra, Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and Nineveh Plain. After 2003, more than 200 major bombing attacks occurred in Christian areas, resulting in the destruction of 62 churches and monasteries, and the death of thousands of people, along with at least ten clergymen, including the Chaldean bishop of Mosul Faraj Rahho. Five hundred shops owned by Christians in Basra were subject to fires, destruction and looting. Subsequently, out of the one million Christians who were present in Iraq before at the U.S. invasion, approximately 670 000 left the country after 2003. Estimates had indicated the presence of 1.4 million Iraqi Christians before the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, but due to many factors, including the West’s embargo on Iraq, about 400,000 people migrated, mostly to Europe, America and Australia. This means that the number of Christians today in Iraq, which is estimated at 330 000 people, represents only 23% of their number before 1991, and only 33% of their number prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Thus, according to the historian and academician Daniel Pipes, Christians appear to be disappearing from Iraq, bringing back to mind the experience of Iraqi Jews whose presence in Iraq completely faded in between 1948 and 1968.
As for the other, very minor, religious communities, such as the Shabaks, Yazidis, and Sabeans, they have almost completely vanished from Iraq after 2003.
While the United States is partially responsible for the Iraqi Christians’ predicament, most of the responsibility falls on the various Iraqi governments that held power after 2003, especially the government of Nuri al-Maliki which failed to provide any protection for this pacifist minority, take any initiative to compensate the victims, or merely secure the return of the internally or internationally displaced. Western nations also bear part of the blame for granting their support and financial aid to corrupt governments, while ignoring the predicament of religious minorities that are systematically targeted.
Christians in Iraq, much like all Christian communities in the Mideast, are paying the price for international and regional crises and civil wars. They are also paying for mistakes made by the Western world, and for the religious hatred that has increased in the last four decades, after the emergence of the so-called Islamic awakening. Meanwhile, they lack the protection or support of the international community, which is watching passively as these tragic events unfold.
With no end in sight for this ordeal, the remaining Iraqi Christians demand self-government rights in their own districts, especially in the plain of Nineveh, as well as an allocation of assets so that they may preserve what is left of their heritage, and entice some immigrants, especially those who left to neighboring countries, to return to their homes. Would this appeal gain the support of the Iraqi government and the international community, or would they let Christians disappear from the land of their fathers and forefathers?