Gorilla’s Guides

The child in the photo was called Tony Edward Shiol. He was 5. Tony lived with his family in Shaikhan about 40 Kilometres east of Mosul. Once you know that his first names were Tony Edward, you know immediately that he was the child of Christian parents, his surname and the fact that he lived in Shaikhan, confirm it.

Tony was kidnapped 11 days ago. We reported it here Gorilla’s Guides » Blog Archive » إستشهاد طفل من الطائفة المسيحية على يد إرهابيين في الشيخان . According to the police [report is in Arabic] Tony’s kidnappers contacted his father and demanded a ransom of $50,000, there was no further contact from the kidnappers and Tony’s corpse was found yesterday. His kidnappers had strangled him and dumped his body. The police are describing Tony’s kidnapping and murder as a “terrorist act”. The murder of a child, any child, is terrible, it is a crime that cries to heaven for vengeance. But it is not, necessarily, a terrorist act.

One of the results of the American-led invasion of Irak followed by the demolition of the organs of state carried out by the regime headed by the war criminal Paul Bremer was the break down of law and order. Kidnapping became common and remains so. (We have it “tagged” it as a topic in no less than 102 postings at the time of writing.) At the height of the lawless period many kidnappings were carried out by political groups as part of their ethnic cleansing campaigns, but many others were carried out by criminals for money and for no reason other than money.

There’s a reason why our Christian fellow citizens are fleeing Irak and not coming back. The tragedy of Tony Edward Shiol’s murder illustrates it perfectly — Christians are targets. Sometimes they are targeted as a matter of ethnic cleansing, sometimes because of  warped and fanatical religiosity, and sometimes because they are often seen as being a relatively wealthy and relatively powerless minority.

Irak’s Christians have been through hell, Irak’s Christians continue to endure hell – the figures speak for themselves. As best I can determine the Christian population stood at 1.2 million in 1991, 800,000 in 2003 and is less than 400,000 today. When I talk to the few of my Christian friends who remain in Irak, they are divided. Some dream of a return to old days of an Irak that treats its Christian minority well and cherishes their presence. An Irak in other words that behaves like Syria and Jordan. There are many who have given up and are fleeing to Europe, to America, or to wherever will take them, finally there are some who want their own semi-autonomous region in the Plain of Ninawa.

This last option the “Ninawa plains project” is fatally flawed. Its flaw is that the Kurds are determined to incorporate the Ninawa plains into what is rapidly evolving from an autonomous region to a de facto state while the governorate authorities and the government in Baghdad are equally determined to prevent the Kurdish land grab. The result is that Christians, especially Christian families with children, are vulnerable to intimidation and coercion from all sides. No wonder they flee.

Ali