Displaced Assyrians Want to Stay in North Iraq
North Iraq -- Sana's agony started a long time before the day al-Qaeda militants attacked the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad recently. Her misery began when Saddam Hussein's men killed her husband 16 years ago, leaving her alone to raise five children. "Our hearts have been filled with sorrow since long ago," said Sana, who would not give her surname. After 40 years of life in Baghdad, Sana felt there was nothing left for her and her family in the capital city, so she moved them to Sulaimani, the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan's second largest city. Although the plight of Iraq's Christians has recently been in the international spotlight, many of them say they have always been under threat in one form or another. Amal Yusef, 58, says she has always prayed to God to ask that her children can live in peace and be safe from the danger of armed masked men, "but they finally forced us to leave. They kept threatening us all the time," she said. Yusef said her ancestors had been living in the southern Iraqi city of Basra for generations, but that she had no hope of returning to her hometown any more. "Here [in Sulaimani] we feel secure and happy," said Yusef. "I have never felt so safe and confident for the past 40 years." Yusef's sons are well educated and are employed as senior civil servants in Kurdistan. Their only problem, she said, was "the children's education and housing." Yusef said many of the Christian families that had relocated to Kurdistan in recent years had similar problems, and if it had not been because of employment and their children's education, "they would like to stay in Kurdistan and live here." Abelhad Afram, the head of the Chaldean Democratic Union Party, said that, when Christian civil servants relocated to Kurdistan, the Iraqi government did not transfer their credit for years of service to their new positions in Kurdistan, or assist them financially in other ways. "The Christians who come to Kurdistan do not know Kurdish and this has become a problem for their children's education," Afram told the Kurdish News Network (KNN). He criticized recent statements by some European countries that they were willing to accept Iraqi Christian refugees, saying "they want to evacuate Iraq of its Christians." He encouraged his fellow Christians to move to Kurdistan, which could give them at least the possibility of one day being able to return to their original homes. Tony Romanio, a 19-year-old Iraqi Christian, was leaning on a wall watching the Christian families queuing up in front of the Sulaimani immigration office to receive their per-family grant of 500,000 Iraqi dinars (around US$400) and three blankets. His face had a look of overwhelming sorrow. "Because of problems with school and study, I have not been able to go to school for the past few days," he told Rudaw. A junior high school student, he moved to Kurdistan with his family almost empty-handed. He said if he could adjust to school in Kurdistan, then he would have no problems. "I see the [other] young Christians from Kurdistan and feel they are very happy, so I do really want to stay here," Tony said. Following the recent wave of attacks on Christians, Kurdistan's President Massoud Barzani asked the regional government to form a committee to deal with displaced Christians seeking refuge in Kurdistan. An official at the Iraqi immigration office in Sulaimani said they had distributed forms among the displaced families asking them to identify their needs so they could be assisted. Before the arrival of the latest wave of displaced Christians, Kurdistan had accepted around 36,000 refugee families from southern and central Iraq. Nearly 9,000 of these were based in Sulaimani. Jabbar Mohammed Ali, a representative from the immigration office, said Sulaimani was accommodating newly displaced Christian families well. He said some of the families were being housed in churches and others were staying with relatives and friends. In recent weeks, nearly 700 Christian families had moved to Kurdistan, he said. "What we gather from talking to them is that, if they have their employment, housing and children's education problems resolved, then they would like to stay here," Ali said. Ali criticized the Iraqi Immigration Ministry for not extending the same kind of assistance to refugees in Kurdistan as it does to refuges in other parts of Iraq. He said the Iraqi government had not given any financial help to displaced families who had moved to Kurdistan since 2009.