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FROM EMBARGO TO EXILE Road to Calvary for Iraq's Christians A year after Operation Desert Fox, the UN Security Council has adopted a new resolution on Iraq. The abstention by three of its permanent members - France, Russia and China - emphasises that it was essentially an Anglo-American decision. At whatever cost the United States is determined to maintain a murderous embargo. In these circumstances the cancellation of Pope Jean-Paul II's visit is causing vast disappointment, especially among Iraq's Christians. by our special correspondents HANA JABER and KHALIL KAMOUK * _________________________________________________________________ It is a long way to Ur. Four hundred kilometres through the heart of rural Iraq, along the road between Baghdad and An-Nasiriyah. Palm groves are scattered across a land so water-logged that there are small marshes all along the roadside. It is a land left fallow, abandoned, in spite of its rich soil. Occasional hamlets of low houses, made of clay and straw, lie hidden to the world. Men, women and children watch over flocks of sheep and herds of cows. They trace sad silhouettes against the landscape, carrying bundles of wood or buckets of water in the December cold. Pope John-Paul II had been scheduled to visit Iraq this month. Had he come, would he have guessed how slowly life moves in a place like this as he flew over in his helicopter? Would he have guessed how difficult the road leading to the house of Abraham is for ordinary mortals? Would he have known that Ur, located within the perimeter of a military base, is guarded by soldiers shivering in their sentry-boxes, who check identity cards and entry permits and firmly insist on accompanying visitors? What would he have been coming to do in this isolated spot in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of a Shia region of southern Iraq where Christians can be counted on the fingers of a couple of hands? Dating back to the glorious days of Mesopotamia of the Sumerians and Chaldeans, this is one of the most important archaeological sites in Iraq. The abundant shards of pottery mixed in with the earth are a mark of its impressive wealth of remains. Discovered by a British archaeologist in 1922, the part of the site where Abraham is said to have lived has been closed to the public since the end of November. Teams of archaeologists and entrepreneurs are poised to restore the house of Abraham and build the roads that would have made access easier for the "popemobile" and its motorcade. Dayef, the site's watchman and the only person allowed to live there permanently, still believes that the visit by the Holy Father - about whom he knows nothing other than that he is "an important religious person" - is still going to happen "to judge by the preparations". The local authorities, loath to make any statement, were waiting for instructions from Baghdad, and contented themselves with marking out access to Ur with permits, signatures and official minders. While getting ready to welcome the supreme pontiff, Baghdad remained reserved and cool. Through a letter from a group of intellectuals Iraq even reproached the Vatican for having "a one-sided viewpoint ... developed far from the history of Abraham" (1) and asked what point there was to this journey if not to denounce the embargo. "If religion does not undertake to improve the lives of people", they asked, "then who will do it?" The route of Salvation History, on which Ur was to have been the first "station" (2), proved to be a diplomatic road to Calvary. Announced, discussed, disputed and finally cancelled, the Ur visit seemed, because of the political weight it could have carried, beset with pitfalls from the outset, if not compromised. It would however have borne the "good news" of a more clement period to come. Remembering the impact of the pope's visit to Cuba, Mgr Bidawid, the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, saw the pontiff's visit as a way of breaking the embargo and making the suffering of the Iraqi people weigh on the conscience of the world. Without taking an official stance, he voiced indignation both as an Iraqi and as a church leader against the psychological pressure being put on the pontiff: "Iraq's enemies have done all they can to make the pope give up this visit. An attitude like that is unworthy of these states ... The Vatican is after all not an American colony, and the pope as a head of state is sovereign. If it had gone ahead, his visit would have been a real moral lesson to the Americans, who have 70 million Catholics among them." On 10 December a Vatican spokesman announced that the pope would not be visiting Iraq, explaining that the Iraqi authorities had told the Vatican's secretary of state that abnormal conditions in the country due to the embargo and the prohibition of flights over its territory, plus the situation in the region, made it impossible to make proper preparations for the pontiff's visit to Ur. This non-visit bodes ill for a peaceful start to the new millennium in this country with its blood-soaked history (3). The various churches were still making their preparations, picturing a mass that Mgr Bidawid believes would have brought together more than 100,000, and imagining the impact of the Holy Father's words on the Iraqis and of the more private words addressed to the Christian faithful - the glorious start of an era of peace heralded by the Christians. Ethnic and religious mosaic Iraq's Christians saw themselves called to centre stage for a brief moment in history as messengers of peace, after being confined to the outer darkness of political life, uninvolved in the conflicts between communities that had plunged the country in blood in both north and south. The Christians are estimated by the Council of Churches at 1.2 million out of a total population of 22 million. This figure, seen as realistic by some and over-optimistic by others (4), reflects their lightweight demographic position in Iraqi society. Though a minority, the Iraqi Christians form an ethnic and religious mosaic that harks back, in the national memory, to Mesopotamia, the Bible and the schisms that marked the growth of Christianity. "We're Iraq's first Christians , but also the first Iraqis," boasts Peter, a Chaldean academic. The majority of the Christians are in fact Chaldeans and are organised, like the Maronites in Lebanon, around an autonomous church that was linked with Rome in the 18th century (the Chaldeans were previously under the religious authority of the Nestorian Church of the East). The remaining minority is split among Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs and Arabs, and they can be Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or even Adventists - not to mention new evangelical sects and Jehovah's Witnesses, whose influence has been spreading since the war ended. "In proportion to the number of Christians in the country, we have more churches in Iraq that there are in Rome!" says the Chaldean Patriarch. "There are at least 100, with their presbyteries, and easily 30 monasteries. Each village around Mosul has a church and a monastery." The Patriarch tries to be upbeat; Christians here are not second-class citizens, they have not lost their religious freedom and - a classic response - the church's cohesive role has even been stronger under the sanctions. "Man remembers God only in times of crisis, " he says, "it's a well-known fact; and for several years now, the churches are never empty for Mass. But there's nothing special about Christians under the embargo - it affects us all equally. Perhaps the difference, if there is one, is that we are lucky enough to have institutions to organise ourselves around." Yet this minimal difference is an important one. It highlights the importance of the religious networks that link the simplest church in old Baghdad to the most prestigious bishops' palaces of Europe, America or even Australia. Coming in humanitarian convoys when the embargo started, their aid was turned down by the government which felt at the time that the Iraqis should not be asking for charity. Blocked at the beginning, the Church took a second breath with the creation of Caritas in 1992. And, with the blessing of the authorities, Caritas was able to operate upstream of the traditional funds for the poor existing within each parish. It could do it at three levels: help in kind, financial aid, and rehabilitation projects. The scope of the Caritas projects at national level shows both the volume of aid provided internationally (5) and the growing needs of some of the poor. According to the organisation, "The first year, we had 5,000 families on our books who were already on the churches' lists. The following year there were 9,000. Today, there are 40,000 families benefiting from our aid, and over all our 12 centres (seven in Baghdad and five in the various provinces) there are at least 800-1,000 families on the waiting-list at each of them." These various forms of aid are provided under the medical programme, or under the food programme as a supplement to the government's ration card system thanks to which each family receives, to a subsidised value of around 1,000 Iraqi dinars (50 cents), an allocation of basic items comprising flour, sugar, lentils, tea, oil, rice, milk, soap and washing powder. This aid confirms that poverty is growing ever faster in some sections of the population. It also shows that at least 16% of the Christians are on the bread-line (6). Annoussa is a typical example of this poverty. It would be hard to tell how old she is. She comes from Kara Kosh, a village close to Mosul; she left it almost 20 years ago after her husband had been killed in the war with Iran and her house was expropriated by the authorities. She ended up in the Battawin district in the heart of old Baghdad, an old Jewish quarter in one of the most middle-class parts of the city. She shares the house with her son and his family, and her son-in-law with his children - her daughter died of cancer a few years ago. A second daughter lives in Madinat Saddam, a crowded district on the other side of the city with a Shia majority. Her son-in-law is a peddler, her son a day-hire workman. Each morning he goes to the mastar (hiring line) to look for a day's work: on one of the capital's squares workmen form groups every morning, some with their brooms and shovels, others with their road drills, others with their paint-brushes, and wait for hours in the hope that some employer will take them on for the day. Annoussa and her daughter-in-law bake bread at home for people who bring them the flour. She makes some 80 pittas a day, at 25 dinars each (about a cent), and works for two weeks of the month - the time it takes for people to use up their ration of flour. The courtyard of the house is cluttered with the bread oven and the cardboard boxes she uses to keep the pittas "clean and dry", for the humidity in the house is stifling, and the smell from the sewers unbearable. In one of the rooms, you can see ramshackle furniture with peeling paint, yellowed and curling family photographs, the portrait of Saddam, an icon of the Virgin Mary, and a host of crosses and rosaries. A Syriac Catholic, Annoussa is a practising believer but not a fanatic. No church could reproach her for lack of fervour - she goes to all the masses, Catholic, Orthodox and even Adventist. "God is everywhere, and I worship Him wherever I can ... But there, as well, they help me and I can bring a little bit of money to the grandchildren so they can carry on going to school and not end up begging." Annoussa says they've not eaten meat for more than five months, and that when she has the money for it, she buys the head and offal which work out cheaper. A chance glimpse into the fridge, however, reveals a small, sinful extravagance - a chicken. Slow migration Reaching a state of total poverty for people of modest social class is a something new among the Christians, and is due to the embargo. Before then the Christians were seen as comfortably-off, thanks to the service sectors they specialised in (running bars, restaurants, hotels and the like), and in particular through being the only ones allowed to sell alcohol. After the conflicts in 1959-60 with the Kurds, they began a slow migration from the north to Baghdad. The independence granted to the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1974 has over the years had unhappy consequences for the Christian villages. "There are checkpoints between the north and the central authority. I can't go to Duhok, for instance, unless I came from there", explains Peter, a professor of architecture. "This separation has played a great part in making us feel isolated as Christians, and has made people move out not only to Baghdad [where there are said to be 700,000], but overseas as well, following an earlier generation who left in the 1950s and 1960s, especially for the United States. A big Chaldean community has grown up in Detroit". Peter teaches at the university of Baghdad and refuses to become an exile. The feeling of fear and confinement is not particular to the Christians, any more than poverty: they are a reality shared by all Iraqis. With 6m inhabitants bottled up there in search of a home or a job, and having trouble in absorbing the growing influx of Shia from the south, Baghdad is a capital fast going downhill. So Annoussa's story is far from uncommon. A fair number of the 900,000 widows (7) from all religious communities have a similar tale to tell - only the degrees of material need and family break-up vary. Little as anyone likes to admit it, the wounds opened by the war with Iran are bleeding afresh. These are things you don't say, things you don't talk about. The embargo is prolonging the agony, making it deeper. The soldier, who yesterday was a hero on the field of glory, given the task of "defending the eastern gateway of the Arab world" against the Persian foe, is now, like all the young, just one more fettered soul, drawing his miserable pittance - the equivalent of $2 a month - while he wonders what new war the future has in store for him. Civil servants, a privileged group in the old days, now cannot met their families' basic needs. "What does earning 18,000 dinars (around $9 a month) mean for your average academic?", asks Salem, a lecturer at the university. "The soldiers and lower-rank officials were the first to feel the pinch. Yet for years they were, and still are, loyal servants of the state. It's not right that someone who has fought in the war for years on end should be put out to grass, penniless. Lately, they've brought in the system of pay-for-yourself. Anything to do with an administrative office, you have to pay 200 dinars (10 cents) to get through the door. It's the same for going to hospital. The result is, I never have anything to do with the administration now, and I don't go to hospital. The way things are going, compared with our purchasing power, it's an open invitation for delinquency, prostitution, corruption and, at best, emigration." We're on Hashemite Square in Amman, the capital of Jordan. The ambience is strangely familiar. Iraqi women, recognisable by their black robes, are sitting on the pavement selling cheap goods and cigarettes; scruffy cafes serve cardamom tea and Iraqi dishes; leather merchants and men selling beads are clearly compatriots. This is where they told Ali to come before he left Basra three years ago with his belongings crammed in a suitcase. This square, so small if you compare it with the public squares in Basra, opens onto a world he finds immense. Seven years in the army had left him without a trade of any kind; his father's carpenter's workshop had closed down, and he could not stay on with nothing to do. Taken in by distant cousins in one of the working-class districts in Amman, he was given free lodgings at first, sleeping eight to a room. But what is there to do, with no trade and no qualifications? Like many of his pals, Ali became a porter in the vegetable market: "There are 60 porters in the souk, all of us from Basra. If you see a guy with a basket on his back, you can be sure he's a porter from Basrah." Having already stayed the six months officially allowed in Jordan (8), Ali has been an illegal for the past two-and-a-half years. He is not alone; there are said to be 130,000 Iraqis in the country each year on average, with only 65,000 of them authorised to be there. Emigration is the plague of Iraq, and the dream of Iraqis. Yet it is difficult to leave, as the authorities well know. They impose draconian rules on officials who, to leave the country, have to leave some of their family behind. Young students cannot travel until they have done their military service and completed their studies. The mahram system (the obligation on a woman to be accompanied by her husband, son, brother or father if she is to move around) was brought in 1993. Leaving the country costs a lot, too. On top of the price of the ticket, there's an exit tax equivalent to $200 a head, an enormous sum for an ordinary person to find. And then where and how to leave? The Turkish frontier is dangerous, and only smugglers can help you get across it. The Syrian one is open only to traders. The border with Iran, too, is dangerous - you'll immediately be accused of sympathising with the opposition Shia Da'wa party. The Jordanian frontier is the only one you can cross without a visa. But while Ali's journey ended in the seedy part of Amman, for others getting to Amman is often only the start of a long, costly and perilous odyssey. "Because here in Jordan we're neither immigrants nor refugees, we're nothing," complains Abu Thaer, an Iraqi Christian living in the little town of Fuheis to the north of Amman. The narrow doors of legal emigration open only for the lucky ones - those who got hold of the right information, made the right approaches, presented the best profile looked for by the various embassies and the UN High Commission for Refugees (9), either for emigrating legally or asking for asylum. For the rest, the itineraries charted by the experts who make a business of smuggling people are worked out in dark, dusty rooms behind shops in the lower part of town. Equipped with telephones, fax machines and a whole network of contacts in various countries, these people-runners pose as "saviours", offering a kashak - an organised journey - at a price ranging between $7,000 and $20,000. There are various sought-after destinations: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries. The routes taken to get there are, to say the least, convoluted: Libya, Turkey, Bangkok, Santo Domingo, Yugoslavia, Russia, Moldavia, Ukraine and so on. At the mercy of their "saviours", those seeking a kashak spend all their savings and quite often end up, empty-handed, back in Amman. "I left with a group for Ukraine. From there, I was supposed to go to a European country. We stopped somewhere in a forest; we were meant to cross the frontier on foot. Because of a police patrol, we were stuck. It was snowing, and there were drug addicts prowling around. A bit later, the runners came and gave us tickets to go back to Amman because it wasn't possible to get over the border any more. We didn't get our money back, of course." Almost every Iraqi in Amman knows of a story like this. Sometimes he will wonder, like Fatima, "whether it wouldn't be better to go back to Iraq, after all these years of grind. Because, after all, when you leave your home, part of you dies". But then she changes her mind, remembering that she has a son of 18 and that if they went back, he'd be a soldier and she would be a soldier's mother. _________________________________________________________________ * Respectively, researcher and journalist, Amman. (1) "A letter from a representative group of Iraqi intellectuals to true believers all over the world ...concerning what is said in the letter of the Church about the Pope's visit to Iraq, Palestine and Sinai", Al Thawra, Baghdad, 29 September 1999. (2) Letter from the Vatican of 29 June 1999 in which John-Paul II expresses his intention of visiting Ur and maps out his pilgrimage round the Middle East. (3) Alain Gresh, "Iraq's silent agony", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, July 1999. (4) A general census was held in Iraq in 1997, but the figures have been impossible to obtain. In 1947, when they saw themselves as a minority losing more and more of their demographic share, the Christians represented 5.9% of the urban population and 3.1% in rural areas. See Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1978, p. 40. The corresponding percentages for the Jewish population were 7% urban and 2.6% rural (ibid.). (5) Drinking water and irrigation projects, most recently at Hamdaniyya, which would benefit 150,000 inhabitants of whom only 35,000 are Christian. Hospital refurbishment projects include five in Ninawa province in the northeast, one in Baghdad and four in the north. (6) Assuming the Caritas figures to be broadly accurate, 52,000 families are said to be in need, receiving aid or on a waiting list. According to Caritas, 25% of these are non-Christian (Muslims and even one Jewish family), leaving 39,000 Christian families in need; this means, with an average of five children a family as cited by Caritas, 195,000 or some 16% of the Christians living in Iraq. (7) A rumoured figure impossible to verify, but supported by those who base it on the number (1.6 million) of those killed on the battlefield in the war with Iran. (8) The Iraqis in Jordan are allowed in only on a tourist visa, are not entitled to work there, and can stay for a period of three months renewable once. After the six months maximum, an Iraqi who stays on in Jordan is an illegal immigrant and liable to a fine of 1 Jordanian dinar (about $1.50) for each illegal day. (9) According to the UNHCR, whose Amman office was opened specially to help Iraqi refugees, 30-40 families apply each day, and 15% of these applications are approved each year. Translated by Derry Cook-Radmore