Christian Genocide in the 21st Century
By Dr. Adhid Miri
Part I
Chaldean, Syriac, and Assyrian Christians represent some of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Their culture and religious identity are rooted in Mesopotamia’s Sumer, Babylon, and Assyrian civilizations. In recent years, Christians in Iraq have been victimized by the Baath Party, the Islamic State, and Shiite-led governments in Baghdad.
In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population numbered over 1.5 million. Today, less than 250,000 Christians remain in Iraq. Their reality is grim. The remaining Christian families suffer persecution and neglect. They have limited access to health care, education, and employment opportunities. The plight of Christians in Iraq continues to worsen, as they flee persecution and neglect. Those who want to go home cannot because conditions are not conducive to their return.
In this 21st century of humankind, we are witnesses to a historic tragedy that is still unfolding — a catastrophe beyond logical explanations of what has gone wrong in a region that once was the cradle of civilization.
In this series of articles, we direct the spotlight on the plight of indigenous people and the Christians in Iraq during and after the ISIS invasion, the era we consider the “Genocide of the 21st Century.” It threatens the existence and the future for Iraq’s beleaguered Christian minority. In this first part, we will look at the rise of Daesh/Islamic State (IS), the plight of Iraq’s beleaguered Christian minority, violence against ethno-religious groups in Iraq, and the silence of the rest of the world on the matter.
Subsequent articles will cover the destruction of World Heritage sites, demographic changes, the Pope’s visit and what that means, as well as this author’s recommendations and thoughts on moral responsibilities of world leaders.
The Genocide
Genocide is understood by most to be the gravest crime against humanity. It is defined as a mass extermination of a particular group of people and is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Behind this simple definition is a complicated tangle of legal concepts concerning what constitutes genocide and when the term can be applied.
Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. It is a crime on a different scale than all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.
The word “genocide” did not exist prior to 1944. It is a very specific term coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews. He formed the word “genocide” by combining “Geno” from the Greek word for “race” or “tribe” with “Cide” from the Latin word for “to kill.”
After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, in which every member of his family except his brothers were killed, Dr Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognized as a crime under international law. His efforts gave way to the adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention in December 1948, which did not come into effect in January of 1951.
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
More recently, in March of 2016, the US accused the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) of carrying out genocide against Christian, Yazidi and Shia minorities in Iraq and Syria. IS was “genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions, in what it says, what it believes, and what it does,” then-Secretary of State John Kerry said.
Several new issues have been raised by scholars and activists which bear on the prediction and prevention of genocide including the salience of the state as the perpetrator of genocide, the distinctiveness of genocide and the importance of intentionality in genocide.
The Rise of Daesh/
Islamic State (ISIS)
Iraq’s Christian population has faced significant persecution since the US invasion in 2003, declining from over 1.5 million to under 200,000, a process that accelerated following the rise of ISIS in 2014. The group threatened to end their 2,000-year history in the country.
ISIS was primarily operating in Iraq, and then reemerged in fuller force and expanded into Syria following the Syrian revolution of 2011.
Daesh/Islamic State (IS) goes by multiple names including Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or by their Arabic acronym, Daesh. The evolution of their name sheds light on the different stages of the organization’s development. The foundation of the group can be traced back to 1999 under the name of Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-al-Jihad (Organization of Monotheism and Jihad), which transformed into al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004, under the leadership of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In June of 2014, the Islamic State officially established itself as a worldwide caliphate with Raqqa, Syria as its capital and declared Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the caliph. A caliph is a Muslim political and religious leader, regarded as the successor of the Prophet Muhammed.
ISIS’ affiliation with and interpretation of Islam has been largely contested and denied by political figures, intellectuals and Muslim leaders and scholars. ISIS was able to achieve religious, political, and military control by employing tactics of insurgency, terrorism, and guerrilla warfare.
The plight of the beleaguered Christian minority in Iraq
Christianity in Iraq dates to the first century of the Christian era, when the apostles Thomas and Thaddeus are believed to have preached the Gospel on the fertile flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) stormed northern Iraq and took over Mosul in the summer of 2014, it ran a parallel campaign of genocide against the indigenous people of the Nineveh Plains. For many of these groups, including Christians and Yazidis, this was the worst assault among a long list of genocides going back over a thousand years.
As nationalism and foreign influences spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, Christians became easy targets of violent discrimination since they were viewed as outsiders. Turkish and Kurdish forces carried out massacres of hundreds of thousands of Christians, pushing them to scatter from their homelands and congregate in safe areas, such as the Nineveh Plains.
Lessons of history on the critical dimension of genocide exist, such as the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1920. “Sayfo” or “Seyfo,” also known as the Assyrian Genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Christians mostly belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church, Church of the East, Assyrians, or Chaldean Catholic Church in the Ottoman Empire and neighboring regions of Persia. These atrocities were committed by Ottoman troops and some Kurdish tribes during World War I.
The United States recognized the Armenian Genocide through two congressional resolutions passed by both houses of the US Congress, and by presidential announcement. The House of Representatives passed a resolution with broad support on October 29, 2019, and the Senate did the same by unanimous consent on December 12, 2019. This made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide part of the policy of the United States. Before 2019, there were numerous proposed resolutions in Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide, all failing to receive enough support.
On April 22, 1981, President Ronald Regan first referred to the events as a “genocide” in a comparison to the Holocaust. On April 24, 2021, now Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden referred to the events as “genocide” in a statement released by the White House, in which the President formally equated the genocide perpetrated against Armenians with atrocities on the scale of those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe.
In recent years, Iraq has endured in a state of chaos, corruption, lack of security and good governance that has given rise to armed militias that have threatened the country’s minority groups. Although the country’s security situation has improved, the status of Christians remains uncertain.
Although Baghdad declared victory over the insurgents in 2017, the damage done to Christian enclaves in the north has been extensive. Security and the rule of law are what Christians most need in Iraq, but it seems no one wishes to offer this. The destruction has left many wondering whether they can overcome their recent history.
Violence against Ethno-
Religious Groups in Iraq
Christians were one of the largest minority groups in Iraq, making up around 1.5 million in 2003. These Christians have a long ethnic history and some unique cultural and linguistic remnants of the ancient Aramaic people of Mesopotamia. The Christian, Yazidi, and Mandean communities have an extensive history of discrimination and violence prior to ISIS.
By August 2014, ISIS took control over all the Christian villages in the Nineveh plains, resulting in abduction, destruction of property, mass displacement, killings and forced conversions. After ISIS captured Mosul, Christians were given the option to either convert, pay taxes (jizya), leave, or be killed. ISIS marked Christian homes with the Arabic letter “N” to mean Nasrani, or Christian, which quickly became a global symbol of solidarity with persecuted Christians.
A few months later, in August of 2014, ISIS took control of all Assyrian towns in the Nineveh Plains, resulting in a second wave of mass displacement. After capturing Sinjar, Tal Afar became a transitory place to hold enslaved Yazidi women before trafficking them to other ISIS territory.
In addition to Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, and Shabak, other ethnoreligious groups in Iraq, such as the Sabean-Mandeans and Kaka’i, were also targeted by ISIS. In fact, a lack of security and mass displacement poses a serious threat of extinction to the already dwindling communities of Sabean-Mandeans and Kaka’i.
The Syrian civil-proxy war, involving ISIS and Bashar al Assad, has led to the largest modern-day refugee crisis, resulting in an estimated 13 million requiring humanitarian assistance, including nearly 6 million registered refugees from Syria alone.
According to the UN high commission for refugees, 2020 has seen the highest number recorded in history (82 million) mostly due to religious and ethnic persecution.
Today, one of the biggest challenges facing Christians in Iraq is the question of return. While the Nineveh Plain has since been liberated from ISIS, many Christians are hesitant and fearful of returning, citing renewed tension between various ethnoreligious groups.
The Silence of the World
In the case of ISIS, however, this is a rare instance in which a non-state entity with no internationally acknowledged boundaries has been accused of committing genocide, which could possibly present new challenges in the application of international law. These discussions shed light on the implications and limitations of a legal genocide designation.
In February 2016, the European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution declaring that ISIS had committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minority groups. This was the first time the Parliament labeled a genocide while events were unfolding.
Shortly after, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution acknowledging that ISIS is perpetrating genocide against Yazidis and Christians. In 2018, the US passed the Iraq and Syria Genocide and Relief and Accountability Act and pledged nearly $300 million in aid to ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. The United Nations declared that genocide is only being committed against the Yazidis.
United States’
Moral Responsibility
The United States assumed a special responsibility to stabilize Iraq and protect its people when it invaded and occupied the country in 2003. Successive US administrations have tried to shirk this responsibility and disengage from Iraq, leaving its people in limbo. Northerners are caught between malevolent neighbors and an increasingly dysfunctional central government in Baghdad.
The US needs to be more engaged if Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syriacs, Mandeans, and other minorities in Iraq are to survive. The United States must urge the Government of Iraq to adopt policies that are favorable to Iraqi Christians. It must also urge the KRG, with whom it had good relations, to include protections for minorities and religious freedom in its constitution and security arrangements.
The US and the international community should encourage the establishment of democracy, tolerance, and equality without merely futile appeals. The West has a moral obligation to force the government to respect human rights, as they are respected in other places, and they must stop arms trafficking that destroy the lives of innocent people.
Western countries must realize that there is no regional benefit to the manufacturing and sale of weapons as support aside from the benefit to Western manufacturing. The Iraqi parliament, the Arab League, the International Arab Islamic Conference, and the religious authorities should submit legislation and official documentation in recognition of Christians and their rights as equal citizens with others, to separate religion from politics. The US government is urged to recognize the responsible course of action centered on the Nineveh Plain Province Solution and related policies.
Sources include Wikipedia and the writings of Yousif Kalian, Michael Youash, Frank Chalk, Zaid Salim, Saad Salloum, Joseph Slewa, Marla Ruzicka, and David Phillips. Special editing by Jaqueline Raxter.