- George W. Bush and Tony Blair claim to have made the
world a safer place by invading and occupying Iraq. Whether they have
remains
to be seen.
-
- What is certain is that they have rendered Iraq far,
far more unsafe for the average Iraqi, and my own Christian relatives in
particular.
-
- Refugee officials in Damascus now estimate that Iraqi
Christians, about 3 per cent of the country's total population, make up
20 per cent of Iraqi refugees in Syria.
-
- If you think about how hard life was under Saddam
Hussein's
regime, to have made it so much worse seems particularly horrendous and
irresponsible.
-
- It's impossible for me to understand how postwar planning
for Iraq never included (and still does not include) guarding the huge
Iraqi border with Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
-
- I guess the war strategists didn't think there was much
anti-U.S. sentiment in any of these countries that might spill over into
Iraq. How can we believe the Bush/Blair line that their invasion has made
the country safer?
-
- I have been communicating with my Iraqi relatives in
Baghdad since the war "ended" and their stories have been
chilling.
When I asked my cousin a few weeks ago how he was doing, he said,
"Still
alive."
-
- He told me that he had been in Al-Rasheed Street to go
to the Central Bank a few days previously, and the next day a bomb exploded
in the exact spot where he had stood.
-
- "This is the second time in two weeks that this
has happened to me. Someone obviously wants to kill me," he deadpanned
with typical Iraqi black humour.
-
- Last Sunday, a series of co-ordinated car bomb attacks
was unleashed near four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul when the
churches
were packed with worshippers.
-
- Fourteen people were killed and at least 60 were injured.
By a stroke of luck, that day my cousin had gone to a nearby church in
Baghdad that was not hit.
-
- He heard the explosions though and saw all the
ambulances,
firemen and policemen swarming around the area. Many people he knows from
the 700,000-strong Christian community sustained injuries from the attacks
and from the shattered glass of the church windows.
-
- He says that all Iraqis are upset about these attacks,
especially his Muslim friends who called to express their condolences
saying,
"We are all Iraqis, we are brothers. We are ashamed, embarrassed and
sad about these atrocities."
-
- These attacks are meant to pit Muslims against Christians
but instead seem to be uniting Iraqis. Mosques and Muslim holy places have
been targeted by the terrorists already, but this is the first time in
history that the Christian church has been attacked in Iraq.
-
- Indeed, Iraq did not have a history of religiously
motivated
violence between Muslims and Christians until this occupation. The region's
Christian communities are among the oldest in the world. When my father
was growing up in Baghdad, he lived in mixed neighbourhoods, and religious
differences were not at issue.
-
- The Pope has called on the United Nations to intervene
to create peace in the Middle East. I searched in vain for a comment from
Messrs. Blair or Bush. According to news reports, The Syriac Catholic
church
of Our Lady of Salvation in Karrada was bombed from a Chevrolet that drove
by.
-
- The bomb blast blew out stained-glass windows, creating
a carpet of coloured fragments outside. This church is where my
grandmother,
my great-grandmother and my great-aunt were buried. Their graves were
disturbed
by damage the church sustained in the Gulf war, and now they have been
bombed directly. Is there no peace even for the dead?
-
- It's even more terrifying to realize that no one knows
who is responsible for the carnage. Iraqis say that it must be outsiders,
because Iraqis would not attack other innocent Iraqis. But no one
knows.
-
- The Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has become a name
to blame most of the attacks in Iraq on, but again, no one really knows
for sure what is happening.
-
- What I do know for sure is that I am watching Iraq being
utterly destroyed day by day - and for what? Now Iraq is unsafe for
Christians
as well as everyone else.
-
- Since the Gulf war, Iraqi Christians have been fleeing
Iraq; the 700,000 that remain have become increasingly terrified for their
lives. The American troops do not seem to be able to keep anyone safe.
Indeed, they are not even in control of many parts of the country.
-
- A recent article by Robert Fisk charged that the cities
of Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, and parts
of Baghdad all are outside government authority.
-
- To Mr. Fisk, Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister,"
is little more than mayor of Baghdad. My conversations with relatives back
this up: "There is no security," they say, and speak of
explosions
going off all the time, many of which are not reported by the international
press.
-
- It is intolerable to me that the foreign policy decisions
of fervent Christians - as George Bush and Tony Blair claim to be - have
resulted in such an atrocity against Christians.
-
- The Christian response to violence is supposed to be
to turn the other cheek. One wonders how different the world situation
would have been if Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair had done just that.
-
- - Leilah Nadir is an Iraqi-Canadian writer who lives
in Vancouver
-
- © Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
-
- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story
/RTGAM.20040805.wcomment0806/BNStory/Front/
|