ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The visit of the head of the Catholic Church to Iraq last year had no “positive impact” on the status of Christians in the country, an Assyrian politician told Rudaw on Friday, decrying the lack of equality for the religious minority in Iraq.
Pope Francis conducted a historic visit to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region in March 2021, visiting several cities across the country, and holding mass for 10,000 people in Erbil. The Pope also met Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who rarely accepts visitors, in Najaf.
“It had no practical impact. Unfortunately, the Iraqi government, only through stories and media, highlighted the Pope’s visit, but it had no positive impact. On the contrary it was exploited,” Yunadim Yusuf Kana, head of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, told Rudaw’s Hawraz Gulpy on Friday.
Iraq’s Christian community has been devastated in the past two decades. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, sectarian warfare prompted followers of Iraq’s multiple Christian denominations to flee, and attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard.
Kana estimated that the number of Christians was between 400 to 500 thousand in Iraq, and 100 to 150 thousand in the Kurdistan Region, stressing that he had “no percise data.”
The Assyrian politician cited mass migration of the Christian community out of Iraq as the reason for their declining numbers, noting that the migration was due to the fact that the community is not treated as equals in the country.
He added that thousands of real estate belonging to Christian people across Iraq have been “encroached” over the years by what he referred to as “mafias”, without identifying the parties alluded to by that term.
“We have some primary demands, which is that this nation [Christians] is a partner in this country. We are not guests here in this country. We have been partners like brothers for hundreds of years, and our future is one,” Kana added.
When ISIS seized control of vast swathes of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, thousands of Iraqi Christians fled their homes, seeking shelter in the Kurdistan Region. Churches in Ainkawa took in many of their brethren before they were resettled in camps or emigrated abroad.
In October 2021, Kurdistan Region premier Masrour Barzani announced the elevation of Ainkawa’s status to a district, placing the town under “administrative control of its Christian residents,” a move that was welcomed by Christian communities local and abroad.
According to data from Erbil’s Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda, there were more than one million Christians in Iraq before 2003. Fewer than 300,000 remain today.
