Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 702 | Wed 19 Jul 2023
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This RLPB updates issues raised in RLPB 699 (28 June 2023) concerning the future of Azerbaijan’s remnant indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Iraq’s remnant indigenous Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains. These ancient Christian peoples are indeed facing a final solution as the governments of Azerbaijan and Iraq – two US-allied, oil and gas-rich, Muslim-majority pseudo democracies – are poised to quietly drive these ancient Christian peoples off heartlands they have inhabited for millennia. The departing remnant Christians will subsequently be replaced by colonising Muslims who will move quickly to erase millennia of Armenian, Assyrian and Christian heritage, as if it never existed.
CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN AZERBAIJAN AND IRAQ
Remnant Indigenous Armenians and Assyrians Face Final Solution
By Elizabeth Kendal
FINAL SOLUTION IN AZERBAIJAN
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| Armenians protest in central Stepanakert, 14 July 2023 Photo: Marut Vanyan/OC Media. |
As reported in RLPB 699, on 15 June, Azerbaijan closed the Lachin/Berdzor Corridor – the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K; also known as Artsakh) – a mountainous Armenian, Christian enclave inside Turkic, Muslim Azerbaijan – to Armenia and the outside world. On Friday 14 July Azerbaijan finally allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to resume medical evacuations, opening the way for eleven critical patients to be transported into Armenia. That same day, 14 July, some 6000 Armenians gathered in N-K’s capital, Stepanakert, to protest Azerbaijan’s siege of the enclave. As Gegham Stepanyan, a human rights defender from N-K has warned (Asbarez, 12 July): ‘Artsakh [N-K] is at breaking point.’ Stepanyan laments: ‘For a month, Artsakh has been completely cut off from humanitarian access, being literally besieged by Azerbaijan. Since June 15, the intentional and total ban on transportation of food and essential goods by Azerbaijan threatens the lives of 120,000 people of Artsakh… The entire population of Artsakh is under the threat of starvation, and the international actors do not take any steps other than statements… My people are being betrayed by everyone’s criminal indifference.’
The siege disregards the binding judgement by the International Court of Justice, issued on 22 February 2023, which demanded Azerbaijan open the corridor pending a final settlement. While negotiations are underway to hammer out a peace treaty, the residents of N-K have no seat at the table. As Joshua Kucera explains (Eurasianet, 15 June), a deal is currently being negotiated ‘on the one side by Ilham Aliyev – Azerbaijan’s dictator-president, who is using oil-and-gas leverage abroad to dictate terms – and on the other by Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s own democrat-turned-petty dictator’ who has already stated he is ready to recognise N-K as part of Azerbaijan. Consequently, Pashinyan is pressing, not for autonomy for N-K, but for ‘security and rights guarantees’ for those living there. ‘It seems,’ concludes the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (28 April) ‘that Yerevan [Armenia] is ready to decisively surrender Karabakh.’ Some fear the stage is being set for genocide, or yet another proxy war between the US (backing Azerbaijan) and Russia (backing the Armenians) for influence in the South Caucuses. Others, like Carnegie’s Kirill Krivosheev, believe conflict will not eventuate. Rather, life will simply become so ‘intolerably difficult’ for the Armenians of N-K that, ‘Confronted with the new, brutal reality, they may decide after all to move to Armenia.’
FINAL SOLUTION IN IRAQ
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| Assyrians protest outside St Joseph’s Ankawa, 13 July 2023. Photo: Julian Bechoch for Rudaw |
As reported in RLPB 699, Iraqi politics is engineered to benefit Iraq’s majority Muslims at the expense of Iraq’s indigenous Assyrian/Chaldean Christians. The pseudo-Christian ‘Babylon Movement’ – which holds four of the five parliamentary seats reserved for Christians – is profoundly compromised. Having won its seats on the votes of Sunni Kurds and Shi’ite Arabs, it is obliged to advance the interests of those communities, not the Christians it claims to represent. Concerning the Babylon Brigades (the paramilitary wing of the Babylon Movement), a profile by Washington Institute (16 March) states that, while it ‘pretends to be a local Christian unit’, its members have been ‘recruited largely from Shia Muslim communities in Baghdad’s Sadr City, al-Muthanna, and Dhi Qar’, and its objective is ‘domination of the Nineveh Plains’. Leading the protest against this existential threat is the Chaldean Patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako [see RLPB 695 (24 May 2023)].
On 3 July Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid (a Kurd from the Kurdistan Region (KRI)) revoked special presidential decree 147 of 2013, that granted Cardinal Sako powers to administer Chaldean endowment affairs. Rashid’s decision came after he met with the Babylon Movement’s Rayan al-Kildani, whose party and militia are ‘affiliated with the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’ (Rudaw, 13 July). On the morning of Thursday 13 July, residents of Ankawa – a Christian-majority district situated at the northern edge of the KRI capital, Erbil – filled the street in front of the Cathedral of Saint Joseph to protest Rashid’s decision. Diya Butrus Slewa, a leading human rights defender from Ankawa, told Rudaw (13 July): ‘This is a political manoeuvre to seize the remainder of what Christians have left in Iraq and Baghdad and to expel them… We hope the Iraqi presidency hears our people and revokes this [decision] as soon as possible…’ Slewa explained to Rudaw that Rashid’s decision strips Cardinal Sako’s authority to administer the Church’s assets and carry out decisions such as renovating and building churches across Iraq. The decision renders all Church assets – land and property – vulnerable to Kildani’s land grab in the Nineveh Plains. On 15 July Cardinal Sako announced that he had left the Patriarchal Residence in Baghdad and would move into one of the monasteries in the KRI; he did not disclose any further details.
PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR MERCIFUL GOD WILL:
* intervene for his faithful people, to preserve life and sustain faith in the midst of injustice, belligerence, betrayal and profound trauma. Lord have mercy!
‘O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head’ (Psalm 3:1-3 ESV).
* awaken the wider Church of the need to speak up, pray for, and give generously to these gravely imperilled Christian communities – the Armenians of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Assyrians of Iraq’s Nineveh Plains – as the Muslims who want them gone threaten to overrun them, and as the post-Christian West turns its back on them. (See Proverbs 24:11-12 ESV)
* protect Cardinal Sako from those who would seek to harm or even eliminate him; may he have wisdom to know how to proceed and how to lead the Church in Iraq. May the fortunes of God’s people be reversed.
SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
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CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN AZERBAIJAN AND IRAQ
A definitive Christian crisis looms over Azerbaijan’s remnant indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) and Iraq’s remnant indigenous Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains. The governments of Azerbaijan and Iraq – two US-allied, oil-and gas-rich, Muslim-majority pseudo-democracies – are poised to drive these indigenous Christian peoples off lands they have inhabited for millennia. Some 120,000 Armenian Christians are currently besieged in N-K, which is at ‘breaking point’. Meanwhile, up to 300,000 Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq are being systematically disenfranchised and disposessed. The departing Christians will be replaced by colonising Muslims who will quickly erase millennia of Armenian, Assyrian and Christian heritage, as if it never existed. All the while, the post-Christian West turns away, ‘ashamed’ of their suffering. Please pray.
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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. The Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) is a donor funded ministry. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com
Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.
For more information see www.ElizabethKendal.com