'Good news'
from Kurdistan (northern Iraq)
WASHINGTON, Retired Iraqi Gen. Georges Sada, a former fighter
pilot-turned-Christian evangelist, says Kurds are converting to
Christianity "by the hundreds" in Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Gen. Sada earlier reported that he had been told that Iraqi pilots,
flying private planes, took weapons of mass destruction to
undisclosed locations in Syria in 2002.
The "good news" from Iraq's turbulent religious scene, consisting
mainly of Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim militias battling each other, is
from the Kurds, he said. Kurds are creating a constitution that does
away with Shariah, or Islamic law, a move counter to trends in other
Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iran, where leaving Islam
is a capital offense and Christian converts are often killed.
"No Christians in the Kurdish territory are persecuted," he said
yesterday in an interview.
Gen. Sada, 66, who lives in Baghdad, cited growing numbers of
evangelical Christians in the Kurdish city of Erbil and a recent
church conference of 854 Christians at the city's Salahaddin
University as demonstrations of the Kurds' willingness to protect
religious freedom.
He added that Nechervan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan
regional government in Erbil and nephew of former Iraqi Governing
Council President Massoud Barzani, was extremely positive about
evangelical Christians' efforts among Iraq's 4 million Kurds.
"He told me he'd rather see a Muslim become a Christian rather than
a radical Muslim," the general said.
He spoke last night at McLean Bible Church, Northern Virginia's
largest congregation, about his new vocation as director of the
Iraqi Institute for Peace and president of the National Presbyterian
Church in Baghdad.
"My foundation for peace is Christianity," said Gen. Sada, who was
born an Assyrian Christian. "We must learn to love. Muslims will say
they've got love and forgiveness, but I want to emphasize what Jesus
Christ has said."
Gen. Sada has his work cut out for him. Outside the Kurdish areas,
"Christians are in a very tough situation," he said. "Their children
are kidnapped, and their money is taken by terrorists."
A fighter pilot like his father, Hormis Sada, Gen. Sada rose quickly
in the Iraqi military in the 1960s and 1970s and was made a general
in 1980. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he was responsible for
interrogating U.S. and allied pilots shot down over Iraq.
The foreword to his recent book, "Saddam's Secrets," is written by
retired Air Force Col. David Eberly, whose plane was shot down Jan.
19, 1991. Col. Eberly evaded capture for three days before he was
found and taken to Baghdad.
"Suddenly I found myself in the presence of a man who, despite the
power he had over me, still seemed to respect my human dignity,"
Col. Eberly wrote of Gen. Sada.
When Saddam Hussein's younger son, Qusay, demanded that the 24
pilots in Gen. Sada's custody be killed, the general refused. He was
imprisoned for a week, released, then discharged from the military
on Feb. 5, 1991. But he kept his extensive military contacts, who
told him of Saddam using private planes to fly weapons of mass
destruction to Syria in 2002.
But it was not until April 2004, when Jordanian intelligence
reported foiling an al Qaeda plot to unleash 17.5 tons of
explosives, including sarin nerve gas, in downtown Amman, that he
decided to go public with what he knew.
"I thought, 'Wait a minute,'?" he recalls. "The weapons must have
fallen into the hands of terrorists." About the same time, he
encountered Terry Law, the Tulsa, Okla., founder of World
Compassion, a Christian aid group, who put him in touch with a book
publisher.
"God had brought this together," the general said, "and I prayed
about this and decided to go ahead. But this decision was not easy,
as there's a vacuum of security in Iraq."
A week after the general's book came out in January, he was summoned
by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and chairman of the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to talk about
weapons of mass destruction under Saddam. No one knows where they
are in Syria, the general said, because the men who flew the lethal
weapons into Syria aren't talking.
"It's not easy for pilots to say, 'Yes, I transported weapons of
mass destruction,'?" he said.
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