Iraqi Christians also suffer from the sanctions

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 19 February 2000

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- I was pleasantly surprised to find an evangelical church in downtown Baghdad during my visit last November. Some 500 people attended the service, including many young people. The singing was enthusiastic. People seemed happy to be there.

Later conversations showed, however, that Iraq's Christians, who form less than 5 percent of the country's 22 million people, suffer the same hardships as the rest. A church leader referred to the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s and to the Gulf War in 1991, each of which claimed 100,000 Iraqi lives, and to the sanctions of the last decade that have taken more than 1 million lives.

This enormous death toll from the sanctions is largely because people could not get enough medicines, food and clean water. Earlier, Iraq imported 70 percent of its food. When the sanctions were imposed, Iraq increased its own food production but could not produce enough, in part because fertilizers and pesticides could not be brought in. Also excluded were spare parts for water purification systems; hence the contaminated water.

In 1996 the United Nations and Iraq agreed to an Oil-For-Food program allowing Iraq to export some oil and acquire some humanitarian goods, under detailed U.N. monitoring. This has increased daily food rations substantially, but the Oil-for-Food program has been largely a "hand-out" program, allowing little for rebuilding infrastructure and re-starting the economy. The Iraqi government has little money.

Unemployment stands at 65 percent. Salaries for teachers, doctors and civil servants are at less than 2 percent of what they were. School attendance has fallen while stealing, prostitution, and killing has increased. Young people seldom marry because they have no source of livelihood. Infant mortality rates have risen substantially. Deaths from diarrhea alone have increased ten-fold. Families are known to sell even their living room furniture and clothes to buy medicine for a sick child.

Prospects are bleak for all Iraqis, Christian or Muslim. But the Christians, as a small minority, feel the losses in a particular way. Many Christians were active in business and the professions, both of which have been decimated. In the southern city of Basra where Christians were active in businesses related to the port, the Catholic church reports a decline from 3000 families in 1985 to 500 in 1999.

Christians in the north have suffered also because of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Kurds accepted help from Iran. The Iraqi government responded brutally. Kurds were killed in vast numbers and many villages close to the Iranian border were cleared away and the people relocated. In the process, some 150,000 Christians were forced out of their home areas and 85 churches and monasteries, some more than 1,000 years old were destroyed.

In the early centuries the Christians of Iraq were active in missionary work and scholarship. There was periodic persecution but usually they had good relations with their rulers. In the 14th century, however, the Mongols almost wiped them out. Catholic missionaries came in the sixteenth century and Protestants in the nineteenth. But late in the 1960s the missions had to leave, in part because of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Most of their educational and medical institutions were nationalized.

Today, Catholics count for almost 70 percent of Iraq's Christians. The rest belong to Orthodox groups. The number of Evangelical congregations (all Protestants are called Evangelical) may be less than 10. Many Christians have emigrated. Obviously, Western Christians should be concerned about all Iraqis. The situation of the Christians there and the future of their witness are additional reasons to urge our governments to seek more constructive responses and to pray for God's healing of that nation.

The sanctions have been in place since 1990 to pressure Iraq to cooperate with U.N. inspectors checking for weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological. Understandably, the work of the inspectors was controversial. Were they spies? Did Iraq hide things? Despite these and other questions, by December 1998 the inspectors were close to concluding that Iraq had met the requirements.

Then a crisis developed, principally between the United States and Iraq, each blaming the other. The United Nations withdrew their inspectors and sent in bombers. Throughout 1999 U.S. and British planes made almost weekly raids, targeting military installations but also hitting residential areas, schools, hospitals, a herd of sheep, water installations and an oil pipeline. More than 100 civilians were killed and many more injured. The bombing also fueled anti-Western sentiment.

Late in 1999 the U.N. Security Council formulated a new approach. The Oil-For-Food program would be broadened but Iraq would have to allow weapons inspectors back in, and the sanctions would be lifted only if Iraq demonstrated 'cooperation' over a period of time. Iraq's initial response was to reject the proposal, claiming that it was a ploy to once more extend the sanctions since 'cooperation' had not been defined and since President Clinton has said the sanctions will stay as long as Saddam stays.

Perhaps an accommodation will eventually be reached and the sanctions eased or lifted. But even if that happens, the future will be difficult. A generation of children has been affected by serious malnutrition. A once advanced education system has been greatly weakened. Repairing the physical infrastructure will cost billions. And thousands of educated and skilled people have left the country, a sharp contrast to the 1980s when more than 1 million foreign workers were drawn into Iraq's economy.

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