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  "path": "/2026/06/iraqs-new-christian-patriarch-inherits-a-vanishing-flock/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-09T14:58:29.000Z",
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  "textContent": "On its surface, Polis III Nona’s installation ceremony bore all the hallmarks of a thriving church. The new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, was flanked by clergy, adorned with traditional vestments, marking the transition to a new era for one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Yet the congregation he inherits has all but vanished since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before 2003, an estimated 1.5 million Christians called Iraq home. Today, fewer than 150,000 remain.\n\nNot all is lost: restored churches represent renewed hope, while holiday Masses still fill pews in Erbil and Qaraqosh. But Christian life has not recovered from the war. Nona’s entreaties for Iraqi Christians unity are not only out of spiritual concern, but also recognition of the reality that if the Christian community does not stand united, it will cease to exist. Solidarity represents the last hope for a once-vibrant community nearly obliterated by decades of violence enabled by state weakness that persists to the present.\n\nThe 2003 invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, opening a power vacuum that al-Qaeda in Iraq quickly filled. The terror group branded Christians as Western collaborators and began a murderous campaign against them. The anti-Christian violence peaked in October 2010, when gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral in Baghdad and killed 58 people. By then, roughly half of Iraq’s Christians had already emigrated. Baghdad’s Dora district, once known as the “Vatican of Iraq,” emptied out following kidnappings, assassinations, and extortion. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, the exodus accelerated; by 2013 the Christian population had fallen to about 500,000.\n\nThen the catastrophe escalated. In June 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) seized Mosul and issued an ultimatum to Christians: convert, pay tribute (_jizya_), flee, or die. ISIS destroyed all 45 churches in Mosul, razed the Monastery of Saint Elijah—the oldest in Iraq—and drove about 120,000 Christians from the Nineveh Plains. By the time former Secretary of State John Kerry declared the campaign a genocide in 2016, roughly 90 percent of Iraq’s pre-war Christians had fled. ISIS was largely defeated the following year, but for Iraq’s Christians it was too little, too late. When Pope Francis visited Qaraqosh in 2021, only about half of its displaced residents had returned. Military success, recognition, and reconstruction have not led to a return.— especially as economic opportunities are largely nonexistent.\n\nThe danger did not end with ISIS, however, even if highly visible massacres of Christians have abated. The threat now is attrition under militia rule that makes Christian life unsustainable.\n\nThe Popular Mobilization Forces (an official Iraqi institution comprised largely of Iranian-backed factions) now dominate the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Waad Qado, leader of the PMF’s 30th Brigade, in 2019 for extortion, kidnapping, and illegal arrests. Treasury simultaneously sanctioned PMF member Rayan al-Kildani, an Iraqi politician and founder of the Babylon Brigades, for torture and the looting of Christian homes in Batnaya.\n\nThe U.S. Treasury Department also identified the Babylon Brigades as blocking Christians returning to their homes. While al-Kildani himself is Chaldean Catholic, both the soldiers he commands and his political support base are largely Shiite voters and his unit is similarly composed of mostly Shiite fighters. These militias seize land in Batnaya, Tel Keppe, and Bakhdida through forged deeds, registry intimidation, and squatting. They also control transit checkpoints, reconstruction contracts, and the lucrative Mosul–Erbil trade corridor.\n\nPost-ISIS, the Nineveh Plains should be attracting citizens previously driven away by terrorism and political instability. Instead, continued militia presence has made recovery impossible, discouraging sustainable resettlement and rebuilding. Sarah, a Christian who runs a volunteer organization in the region, believes that “Many here are losing hope, because they’ve realized that starting over will be an uphill struggle. There are no services, no jobs. We can help each other but it is hard to imagine a future.”\n\nAl-Kildani is also supported by Iran-aligned Shiite factions. As a Chaldean Catholic, his Babylon Brigades provide a nominally Christian vehicle for Iranian influence in the strategic Nineveh Plains and for converting seats in the Iraqi parliament reserved to Christians into pro-Iran political power.\n\nIn order to guarantee Christians some level of representation in Iraq’s 329-seat parliament, five of those seats are reserved for Christians. Yet because Iraq’s quota system allows anyone to vote on who will fill those seats, so long as the candidates are Christian, Shiite blocs helped al-Kildani’s Babylon Movement win four of the five seats in 2021. Former Patriarch Louis Sako warned that al-Kildani “does not represent Christians in any way” the following year. Christian voters shared his sentiment, and Babylon lost two of these seats in the subsequent 2025 elections. In 2023, al-Kildani’s network helped also strip Sako of official state recognition as Patriarch, leading to the loss of his custodianship over church property, though Baghdad restored his title in 2024.\n\nGiven that Iraq also has a constitution that privileges Islam, including apostasy laws that forbid Muslims from leaving Islam for any other religion, and chronic unemployment among Iraqi Christians, the result is unsurprising: 57 percent of Nineveh Christians have considered emigration while 36 percent expect to leave in five years.\n\nWhat can the United States do? The temptation is to keep treating Iraqi Christianity as a heritage cause by only funding the restoration of beautiful buildings and recognizing past atrocities. That work matters, but it ignores the present dangers facing Iraqi Christians. Today, the threats facing Christians in Iraq stem from a weak Iraqi state that has given control over its core functions to PMF-linked factions that have, with Iran’s aid, turned post-ISIS Christian areas into militia-administered zones. The most useful thing Washington can do is push to Baghdad reclaim those responsibilities.\n\nMore than a decade ago, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged that Iraq be designated a Country of Particular Concern, the highest threat level for religious minorities. Yet, in recent years, despite continued threats to Christians, Iraq is only on the Special Watch List, representing a lower level of concern. Restoring the harsher designation would signal to the Iraqi government that ignoring the plight of Christians carries real diplomatic costs. Washington should sustain and expand the Treasury sanctions already imposed on Qado and al-Kildani and escalate sanctions on their Iranian backers.\n\nWashington should also stand firm behind its insistence that Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, appoint no ministers who belong to political parties affiliated with militias designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States. So far, al-Zaidi has respected that demand. In the long run, making Iraq safe for Christians and other minorities depends on breaking the grip militias and their patrons in Tehran have on the Iraqi state.\n\nWashington can also press Iraq’s parliament to reform the minority quota system so parliamentary seats reflect the voters they are supposed to represent rather than the preferences of larger outside political blocs.\n\nPope Francis, standing amid the ruins of Qaraqosh in 2021, urged Iraq’s Christians not to “forget who they are or where they come from.” Sako warned that without change in the Iraqi government, the country’s Christians may soon disappear altogether. His successor, Nona, now shoulders the burden of working to make sure that does not happen. Washington, as part of its broader strategy to counter Tehran, already seeks an Iraqi government willing to degrade Iran’s efforts to prop up militias and other nonstate actors. The same steps are necessary to protect Iraqi Christians.\n\nWhether the churches of the Ninevah Plains remain living centers of Iraqi Christianity or ultimately become mausoleums depends on whether Iraq, with American help, can protect its Christians.",
  "title": "Iraq’s New Christian Patriarch Inherits a Vanishing Flock"
}