In an interview with Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara late last month, Sako said he took “refuge in Erbil because of the removal of the presidential decree from me in a way that was uncivilized,” as a form of protest to put pressure on Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid to restore a special presidential decree that granted him powers to administer Christian endowment affairs and officially recognized him as the head of the Chaldean Church.
Rashid’s decision came after he met with Kildani, leader of the nominally Christian Babylon Movement, a party and militia affiliated with the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“I do not recognize this faction, nor do I accept that there is an armed Christian faction,” he said. “I also reject the demographic change in the Nineveh Plains, whether it is in Hamdaniya or Tel Keppe (Tel Kaif), which to this day the people of Tel Keppe have not returned to their homes because of this faction.”
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“I do not understand why it [presidential decree] was removed. Of course he was under pressure from a so-called Christian militia that pressured him to isolate me so that I could implement their agenda and so they can remove the authority from the church in order to fully take control of Christian affairs,” Sako said.
The Chaldean Catholic prelate argued that he was deliberately targeted in the decision to remove the decree, explaining that other religious figures “of a lower ranking” than the cardinal have kept their decrees while his was withdrawn.
On his decision to take refuge in Erbil, Sako justified it by saying that he came to the city “because I have churches and Christians here, whether in Ainkawa, Zakho, Amedi, Akre, Sulaimani, or elsewhere.”
Members and leaders of Iraq’s marginalized Christian community deemed the revocation of the decree as an attack on their status and on Sako, a highly respected figure in his community and the head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and worldwide.
The Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq is an area with a historic Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac presence where Christian towns and villages lie. The region’s historic Christian inhabitants were driven out when the Islamic State (ISIS) attacked the area in 2014. Efforts to return since the terror group was ousted have largely floundered due to the presence of the Babylon Brigades in the area.
Sako and Kildani have long been involved in a war of words, with the patriarch condemning the militia leader as an individual who does not represent the interests of Christians despite his party winning four of the five quota seats assigned for Christians in the 2021 Iraqi parliamentary election. His candidates were extensively and openly backed by Shiite political forces affiliated with Iran.
The Babylon Brigades, the paramilitary wing of the Babylon Movement, “is presented as a local Christian force but has 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, a March profile of the brigade by the Washington Institute concluded.
The brigades have been accused of illegally seizing historic Christian land in Nineveh province after ISIS was driven out of the area. Human rights abuses committed by the group ultimately led to the United States Treasury sanctioning Kildani in 2019 for the abuses as well as corruption.
Iraq’s Christian community has been devastated in the past two decades. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, sectarian warfare prompted followers of Iraq’s multiple Christian denominations to flee, and attacks by ISIS in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard.
Fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq today, a staggering fall from over 1.5 million who used to call Iraq home before the 2003 American invasion.
