Iraq
A Sabean-Mandaean woman prepares food to mark Eid al-Khalqeh on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad. File photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - About 70 percent of Sabeans have left Iraq and migrated to other countries over the years, an official told Rudaw on Sunday while highlighting the oppression members of the minority group have faced.
Also known as Sabean-Mandaeans, the minority group has faced “full oppression” over the years, including “political oppression, social oppression, and economical oppression,” head of the Sabean-Mandaeans notables’ council Ghanim Hashim told Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahseen.
Sabeans are followers of a monotheistic religion that predates Christianity and Islam and have struggled since 2003 to cling to their faith amid sectarian tensions experienced in the country during the following years.
Nearly 100,000 Sabeans lived in Iraq until 19 years ago, before the country was plunged into a bloody sectarian and religious conflict, of which minority groups bore the brunt of the crisis.
“Seventy percent [of Sabeans] have migrated, most of them are in Australia now,” followed by Sweden, France, Netherlands, and other countries, Hashim said.
About 2 thousand Sabean families reside in Jordan, while 2 to 3 hundred live in Turkey, he noted.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as Iraq experienced a profound economic boom despite its bloody wars, the Sabaeans, like most other minority groups, were a relatively integrated community with the majority living in Baghdad, the Nineveh Plains, and Kirkuk.
Ironically, the overthrow of Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein, whose brutal reign often resulted in systematic suppression of the Kurds and the Shiites, was paradoxically detrimental to the survival of religious minority groups such as the Sabaeans, the Shabaks, and Yazidis.
Many of the minority groups were assaulted almost immediately by the dominant religious groups after Iraq plunged into a bloody conflict following the former regimes' ousting.
Hashim said “a lot” of Sabeans have been killed since 2003 and that the minority group continues to be persuaded by “criminal groups.”
The numbers of minority groups in Iraq have seen a dramatic decline and their strained conditions worsened when the Islamic State (ISIS) rose to power in areas where Sabeans, Yazidis, Shabaks, and others were residing.
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