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Christians seek safe haven in Iraq's
Kurdistan region
14.11.2007
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November 14, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq',--
Threats by Islamists followed by a car bomb that
wounded her brother forced Lina Behnan and her
family to seek haven in Iraq's Kurdistan region
along with thousands of their Christian compatriots.
But the price of safety is steep, and the Behnans,
like many other Christian families in Iraq, hope
they will eventually return to their homes in
embattled Baghdad and other violence-riddled regions
or even travel abroad.
"We come from Dora in Baghdad. It is very
dangerous," said Lina, as she prepared the family
dinner in a house they are renting for 400 dollars
(275 euros) a month.
"First the Islamists threatened my brother, a
barber, warning him against shaving men," she said.
Fundamentalist Islamists believe beards are a sign
of faith.
"A woman neighbour was kidnapped, and then this,"
said Lina, holding up a photograph of her
18-year-old brother Nasser, an arm slung in a cast
and his face peppered with wounds he suffered when a
car bomb exploded outside his school.
"That was the last straw. We got into a car and
drove non-stop to Erbil," she said.
According to the Chaldean bishop of Arbil and
Amadiyah, Monsignor Rabban al-Qas, "more than 70,000
Christians have fled to Iraqi Kurdistan," settling
in villages abandoned or destroyed in the late
1980s, during attacks on Kurds by the regime of the
late dictator Saddam Hussein.
"More than 200 villages that were abandoned or
destroyed in 1987 and 1988, during Saddam's
offensive against the Kurds, have been rebuilt. Some
are renting houses, while others have built on land
they owned," he said. www.ekurd.net
In Erbil's Christian neighbourhood of Einkawa,
Christian families such as the Behnans have had to
roll up their sleeves and work hard to be able to
pay the rent.
Agnes Yaqub is also from the flashpoint southern
Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, and her family was
among the last to leave the area.
"It is so much better here. We can go out, we can
breathe easily again," said the 38-year-old as she
shopped at the Habib family-run grocery near the
offices of Ishtar Television, Iraq's Christian
channel.
"With so many people coming here from everywhere,
prices are shooting up. Of course that's the price
we have to pay for security, but we won't be able to
do it for much longer," she said.
Fellow shopper Fawzya Benjamin, 50, agreed.
The mother of 12 fled neighbouring Mosul five months
ago and has had to send her older children out to
work in order to help pay the 600 dollars they need
every month to rent the large house the family found
in Einkawa.
In Mosul "we no longer had a life. Each time my
youngest daughters left to go to school I was afraid
I would never see them again."
"This will not last for long. As soon as things calm
down in Mosul we will have to go back," she said.
Bishop Qas said that 20 Christian families have left
Einkawa in the past week, complaining that life had
become too expensive for them in the Kurdistan
region of Iraq. www.ekurd.net
Mosul city is outside Kurdistan autonomous region.
So they packed up and returned to their homes in
Baghdad and Mosul, where churches and priests have
also fallen prey to the deadly violence.
"Three priests have been killed in Mosul. Churches
have been set ablaze, blown up or shot at. And 20
days ago, two priests were abducted and set free
only after a ransom was paid," said the bishop.
He blamed such attacks on "fanatical fundamentalists
and some of the 600,000 criminals who were released
from prison by Saddam before he was ousted" by the
US-led liberation of 2003.
AFP
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