Security is the “most critical need” to be addressed if vulnerable Christian communities are to return to their former homes in northern Iraq, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda told a delegation from the World Council of Churches during a recent meeting in Erbil, Iraq.
While Iraq’s military campaign against the so-called Islamic State has seen it retake what were predominantly Christian towns on the Nineveh Plains in recent weeks, church leaders and government representatives have warned that Christians and other minorities are unlikely to return unless their security can be assured.
Among them is Archbishop Warda who, quoted in an article on the WCC website, told the delegation that rebuilding churches was “the last thing we should think about.” “We want to first build houses for our people so they can live with dignity, and we need infrastructure in the village,” he said. “But all this is only possible if we can have security.”
The 14 member delegation, led by the WCC’s general secretary, Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, spent five days in Iraq, concluding the visit earlier this week. During the visit – which included stops in Baghdad and the northern Kurdistan region, they met with the senior members of the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as well as members of parliament representing minority communities, the heads of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, and representatives of faith communities including heads of the country’s Christian churches.
Antje Jackelen, archbishop of the Church of Sweden and a member of the delegation, paid tribute to the KRG and many citizens who received and offered refuge and support to people from many different communities who had been forced to flee their homes to escape IS in mid-2014 while another delegation member, Fr Michel Jalakh, general secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, made note of the “very important role”, churches, mosques and other religious institutions played in “receiving and caring for internally displaced people in the Kurdistan Region, especially in the early phase of the crisis”.
Peter Prove, WCC’s director of international affairs and another member of the delegation, said the visit had confirmed the findings of a study the WCC had conducted with Norwegian Church Aid which had shown that the removal of IS was not enough to secure peace in areas it had previously taken over. He said that while the delegation found some “interesting differences of opinion on some of the issues, such as the appropriate form of self-government for affected communities on the Nineveh Plain, and nuances of opinion about what’s necessary for Christians and others to return to liberated villages”, there was unanimity when it came to the issue of security.
“This means not just physical security, but also legal and constitutional security, as well as security in the communities’ social and economic life,” he said. “This is a sine qua non, a precondition for reestablishing these communities in their original places.”
