Armed disputes reveal Iraqi Christians' discord
Run-ins between Christian factions' armed units in Iraq expose growing gaps in the parties' visions for their future.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Christians will have to unite under one banner and work past their various political affiliations and differing doctrines to heal the division that threatens the religion from within, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq said after two armed Christian factions clashed in the Ninevah Plains.
Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako issued a statement Aug. 6 in which he said that Christian political parties and armed factions are “responsible to a great extent for the suffering and disorder in which Christians live.” He added, “We believe that a huge part of this ordeal is caused by parties' divisions, their subordination [to Shiite and Kurdish groups] and their failure to unite efforts and ranks and make a unified decision.”
The clashes started last month when Ninevah Plain Protection Units seized allegedly smuggled artifacts from the Babylon Brigades and arrested six of their agents. The agents were handed over to the Hamdaniyah district police. According to Yonadam Kanna, the parliament member supervising the Ninevah Plain Protection Units, agents from the Babylon Brigades, with help from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), then stormed Ninevah Plain Protection Units headquarters.
“The forces took over weapons and vehicles for the purpose of freeing the six arrested agents,” Kanna told Al-Monitor. However, the Babylon Brigades — the military wing of the Christian movement in Iraq, which is affiliated with the PMU — denied the allegation.
