US aid to Iraqi Christians, Yazidis on fast track via Catholic Relief Services

Washington D.C., Jun 19, 2018 / 15:52 pm

The United States Agency for International Development has announced it is investing $10 million into coalitions led by Catholic Relief Services and Heartland Alliance to help rebuild Christian and other minority communities in Iraq who suffered genocide under the Islamic State.

"In Iraq, although the coalition has largely driven ISIS from the battlefield, much of Northern Iraq now faces the daunting task of repairing broken infrastructure and rebuilding a shattered social fabric," said USAID Administrator Mark Green as he announced the funding at the Interaction Forum in Washington, D.C., June 14.

The announcement came one week after reports that Vice President Mike Pence was "incensed" over the "bureaucratic delays" in delivering aid promised to the Christian and Yazidi communities in Iraq.

The United States government will stop using "slow, ineffective and wasteful United Nations programs and to instead distribute assistance through USAID in order to provide faster and more direct aid to Christian and Yazidi communities in Iraq," according to the vice president's press secretary.

Pence has directed Green to travel to Baghdad and Erbil in the coming weeks to "report back with an immediate comprehensive assessment addressing any issues that could delay the process of aid distribution."

Kevin Hartigan, Catholic Relief Services' regional director for Europe and the Middle East, told CNA that "We are grateful for this new funding that provides greater assistance for Christians and other religious minorities returning to northern Iraq."

"It will allow Catholic Relief Services to continue and expand the projects we began in 2014, working with Caritas Iraq to provide critical assistance to Christians, Yazidis and many other Iraqis of various faiths who had been displaced by violence and are now returning to their homes," he continued.

Since 2014, Catholic Relief Services and Caritas Iraq have served more than 300,000 Iraqis affected by the conflict through their offices in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, Dohuk, and Erbil.

CRS will use the most recent funds to "assist the Catholic Church of Iraq to help all war-affected families with the provision of shelter, emergency assistance and education and trauma healing for children," said Hartigan.

Iraq's Christian population was devastated by the Islamic State in 2014. Two thirds of the approximately 1.5 million Christians who formerly inhabited Iraq either fled or were forced out by the violence, according to In Defence of Christians.

"ISIS fighters used most of the 45 churches in the old city for shelter, target practice, and torture and, in the case of the Dominican church, as a place to hang their victims from inside the bell tower," wrote Father Benedict Kiely after visiting Mosul last month.

Iraqi military forces regained control of Mosul from the Islamic State in July 2017; yet only ten Christian families have returned to Mosul's old city, which had more than 3,000 Christian families in 2014, according to Father Kiely.

"Across the Nineveh Plain, where Christians trace their roots back to the time of the Apostles, many Christians have returned nonetheless," noted Kiely.

Archbishop Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil said earlier this year that Christians are "scourged, wounded, but still there."