Every week I publish my very own “Kev’s Column” On line. This week I take a look at the worsening situation in Iraq.
Our TV screens tonight have a sense of déjà vu as once again they are filled with the news that an American President has ordered his forces into action in Iraq.
Whilst much of the world’s attention has been focussed on the conflict in Gaza the situation in Iraq has been getting worse by the day. Christians are fleeing their homes ahead of the advance of the Islamic State (The new name for ISIS) forces, with reports of atrocities being committed against those who hold the faith that is shared by so many of us in the bay. In Mosul where Christianity had existed for 2,000 years the candle of hope it provided is no more.
The Leader of the Anglican Community in Iraq, Cannon Andrew White (Better known as the Vicar of Baghdad), has today said the following:
“There are many explicit examples. They have chopped off heads, chopped children in half, hanged people on crosses. The stories you hear are so bad they don’t sound true they are so extreme — but I am afraid they are extreme, and true.”
“People are being killed and their homes blown up. They are putting yellow on their houses and saying they are ‘Nazarines’ and not welcome,”
In the face of such atrocities it is hard to imagine the west just standing by and letting it happen to even more of the religious minorities trapped by the latest IS advance. I wrote a few weeks ago that the shadow of the Iraq War is very long in terms of western intervention, yet so is the failure to stop the slaughter in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990’s.
The first US airstrikes shown on the TV News today were aimed at relieving pressure on Kurdish forces that have been one of the few able to resist the IS advance. The US strikes are in response to the Iraqi Government’s appeal for help. The Kurds rightly fear the consequences for their own people if the militants take over more of their territory. Yet this resistance to the IS advance may bring another issue to the fore.
Since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 the Kurds have enjoyed an effective level of independence from the Government in Baghdad, yet they are not a recognised state. There is a long held hope to create an independent Kurdish state and this could be one of the long term results of the current conflict if the Iraqi Government in Baghdad cannot find a way to be more inclusive in its style of leadership.
The deteriorating situation in Iraq also raises questions about how we should approach the bloody stalemate in the Syrian Civil War. The IS force has been born out of those fighting the Assad regime, yet now the key threat it poses is to the Iraqi Government that the west supports. Whilst traditional western enemy Iran is sending support to both governments, a real mess of conflicted alliances and polices. Whilst this open wound continues to fester the whole region will be vulnerable to further instability.
The UK military will provide some support to the US operations, but we must avoid this being the first step on a road back to Iraq. Air strikes to provide tactical support to local forces on the ground are one thing, sending British Troops back into this quagmire would be quite another.
There will be a desperate need for aid and some have called for the UK to also accept Iraqi Christians as Refugees. One of the changes our spending on International Aid has brought is that we will pay for support in the region, rather than inviting a number of refugees here.
The total numbers of refugees created by the Syrian Civil War are so large that any number given refuge in the UK would be a token gesture at best. Likewise many will be able to return home once the fighting ceases.
Yet for Iraq’s Christians the end of warfare may still not see them being able to return home given they are not just fleeing conflict, but direct persecution. If this turns out to be the case then it is right that in the future we as a Christian nation should work with other such countries to give those who have no chance of returning home the opportunity of a new life.
In the week where we commemorated the centenary of what was called “The war to end all wars.” I hope the western powers have not taken the first steps back into another ground war in Iraq.