Iraq: towards the liberation of the plain of Nineveh?

On September 13, 2016, the Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, launched an appeal, published by agency Fides, to bring the city of Mosul and its whole region back to life, after the announced defeat of the jihadis of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS). These days, the means of communication recall “the preparations for the Battle of Mosul” and, once more the need for a “great humanitarian project” is in the air. The possible civil renaissance of the zones taken back by from the jihadis, he stated, will begin with mine-clearing. The international coalition is considering liberating Mosul and the plain of Nineveh, according to Radio Vatican, within the next year. IS’s control of these territories, seized during summer of 2014, is slowly slipping: several villages were liberated last May. But they remain inaccessible to their residents because they are booby-trapped: fields, roads and infrastructures are sown with mines by the jihadists.

The Nineveh plain since the monastery Alqosh. (Photo credit: Fraternite en Irak).

In a reflective analysis of the Iraqi political situation released on September 5, Patriarch Sako examines the various possible scenarios in the plain of Nineveh. After the return of the evacuees and the reestablishment of generally stable conditions, the inhabitants of the area will need to be guaranteed the possibility of choosing, through the medium of a free referendum, if they wish to remain under the jurisdiction of the central government of Baghdad, if they prefer to join the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, or if they want to be part of “the eventual Sunni state.” The Patriarch emphasizes that since the American intervention of 2003 that brought about Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, no real process of consolidation of democratic tenets has been inaugurated in Iraq, nor have “the right persons” been appointed “to the right place, according to their qualifications and not favoritism.” Since then, he says, the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen drastically, and in future “it must be borne in mind that a military victory over the jihadists of the so-called Islamic State does not equal the resolution of the problem of the spread of extremist ideology that must be dismantled.”

Bishop Shlemon Warduni, Chaldean auxiliary bishop of Bahgdad, lamented on Radio Vatican, September 29, that the international community is not more invested when it, too, is threatened by Islamic terrorism.

(Sources: Fides – Radio Vatican – DICI no. 342, dated Oct. 14, 2016)

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