The Cradle of Christianity

"The people with families have left. The old people, some of them have stayed. All the young people have left. There are very few children here."
"As for me, in terms of my religious responsibilities, my job is to be father of my people here. I have to stay with these families. But personally, I'm thinking about it. I'm making my preparations."
"I think all our families are thinking of emigrating now. They are marking time. They think of their lives here as  temporary."
"This year, 2014, has made everyone eager to leave. We are on the final step of the way now. Everyone wants to leave. That's it, now."
Father Timothaeus Issa, Baghdad, Iraq

Iraqi Christians attend Sunday mass at the Virgin Mary Chaldean church in the Karrada neighbourhood of Baghdad; thousands of Christians seeing no future in Iraq, have fled the country. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Files

"They left an envelope with a bullet in it at my house. The message said, 'You are an infidel Crusader. Leave or we will kill you and your family'. So I left Dora and went over to my brother's house somewhere safer. They burned down my apartment and then threatened me at my brother's too."
"When I asked, 'What are you going to tell your God about this?', he replied, 'That's between me and God'."
Fadi, 38, former Dora resident

At his brother's home in Baghdad, Fadi's wife received a telephone call. A jihadist who occupied their house had found her number. "I have taken all your possessions. I have all your furniture", a voice said in one call. And in another the voice said "I'm in your house, and I'm going to blow it up." It isn't enough to dispossess Christians, they must also be hounded, harassed, threatened, for Sunni jihadists to feel full satisfaction in doing the work of jihad.

A decade of violence in Iraq has resulted in a year of ethnic cleansing, thanks to the militant momentum of Sunni extremists determined to rout all minorities and ethnic, cultural and religious groups offensive to their sense of Sunni domination of the region. A suburb of Baghdad, Dora is now a Sunni suburb and as such is full of Islamic State jihadists and sympathizers. At one time, before the invasion by the Americans and the British, 150,000 Assyrian and Chaldean Catholic Christians lived in Dora.

Much has happened since then. Blast walls were erected that snake through the streets in Dora, separating areas into communities of Christians, Sunnis and Shiites, walled off from one another to forestall bloodbaths. And now, in the city, 1,500 Christians remained of the original 150,000; an actual decimation. Those that remain worship at churches that echo in their empty-of-worshippers status. Like Father Timothaeus's St.Shmoni. And as sparse as the Christian population has become, he says that monthly two or three additional families leave.

While thousands of soldiers were shot by the Islamic State jihadis, and Turkmen Shia were killed in their wholesale numbers, the murders and collective rapes of Yazidis following the ISIS sweep through the country hasn't seen Christians slaughtered in quite the same manner. They haven't been permitted to remain where they lived for thousands of years, either. Given 48 hours to leave Qaraqosh, Bartella, Tel Kayf and other Christian towns on the fabled Nineveh plain close to Mosul, they were given a choice: convert or die.

Death threats were left for Christians in Dora; notes informing the occupant of homes they must leave in a day. And while they're at it, if they wish to remain, $800 is to be left at a designated shop to enable them to remain until the next threat would be issued. Some responded by supplying the money demanded, and then making preparations to leave, as well; just to make certain they still could. Dora has gone through car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings.

Even so, it is relatively secure, for the time being. With the Shiite militias replacing the jittery Iraqi security forces in parts of Baghdad, the city seems more secure, no longer quite the suspense of being in imminent danger of an Islamic State advance. Father Timothaeus knows all the violent attacks to rhyme them off smoothly: St.George's destroyed in 2004; St. Matthew, Syriac Orthodox church blown up; St.John the Baptist, St.Jacob's, St.Peter and St. Paul; all Chaldean Catholic churches attacked.

And the kidnapped priests; four in 2004-05, sometimes returned when a ransom is paid as occurred with Father Timothaeus's assistant, returned for a ransom of $80,000. A bomb at the nearby Assyrian market killed 27 people last year on Christmas Day, when St.John's Church was again bombed. And then again, a new kind of political settlement appears in the works for the country. One that has long been rumoured, and is perhaps overdue.

The regional sectarian identities to have their own autonomous authorities; the Shiites in the south, Sunnis in the West and the Kurds in the north. But for the Christians of Iraq, reduced by two-thirds from their 2003 numbers, there is no future in a biblical heartland that has been subsumed by Islam. The end of a Christian presence within its origins, is near, says Father Timothaeus Issa.