With Iraq’s security forces poised to retake the city of Mosul and evict ISIS from its last major foothold in Iraq, Fr Joseph Cassar, country director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Iraq, tells Joseph Grech about its people’s suffering, JRS projects in the country, and the massive challenges to restore hope and rebuild lives.

On June 6, 2014, so-called Islamic State declared its global Caliphate from Iraq’s second city – Mosul – which it had just conquered. Christians and Muslims who did not want to live under ISIS fled the city.

Many Christians sought refuge in Qaraqosh, a Christian town of 50,000 inhabitants in the Nineveh Plains. But on August 6, 2014, ISIS arrived in Qaraqosh. Its population was given a choice: either pay very high taxes or convert to Islam, be killed or flee. Many chose the latter and the entire population escaped, literally overnight. Many other towns and villages in other parts of Iraq suffered a similar fate.

The ISIS takeover was the latest is a long series of social upheavals that the Iraqi population has suffered in recent history caused by fighting between the Shia and Sunni groups following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the 2003 and 1990-91 invasions of Iraq, the Iraq-Iran war between 1980 and 1988, and the oppression of Hussein’s regime throughout.

“So there are a lot of injustices that have led to a situation of ongoing turmoil,” Fr Cassar, who was the first director of JRS Malta, said in an interview.

“And policy mistakes in the wake of recent US-led military interventions have contributed to the problem of people being internally displaced within Iraq as well as becoming refugees when they leave the country to seek a better life abroad, including in Malta.”

Within Iraq today there are about 3.3 million internally displaced people, of which about 1.8 million are in Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq with a population of about five million. But Fr Cassar does not balk at the numbers: “Our concern is about people, not numbers. People are the heart of who we are and what we do.”

He summarises JRS’s role as threefold: to uphold and restore the dignity of refugees and internally displaced people; to show compassion to the weakest among them, and to be a sign of hope that a shared future is possible.

“We see ourselves not as doing things for people but accompanying them on their flight, on their journey, their trouble, worries, woes, in their crying – but not leaving them there. We try to be a sign of hope in concrete ways.”

Our teams meet survivors of ISIS...including women who would have witnessed or been subjected to extreme sexual violence and dehumanising, multiple rapes

Yet the greatest challenge, he admits, is to help people who have been continually displaced to keep hoping they will eventually return to their former lives and homes.

When it was first announced that Qaraqosh had been retaken and liberated by the Iraqi security forces, there was celebration among its former residents, who felt their hopes of returning would soon be realised.

“Then the news came in that the town had been devastated. I visited it on December 28. It is now a ruined ghost town – some buildings are totally destroyed, others are burnt, others are intact but completely looted.”

The people’s morale suddenly changed as their hopes of a quick return were dashed.

Another town, Sinjar, was retaken by Kurdish Peshmerga forces more than a year ago but people are unable to return because it is still not safe, apart from the fact that the town has been reduced to rubble.

“People think: I have no money, I am in debt, I can’t go into an empty home and start living there,” Fr Cassar said. “They calculate that they would need at least a few thousand dollars to lead a minimally decent life, but they have absolutely nothing. Moreover, there is no electricity, no water, no schools and no security, the latter being the main reason precluding their going back. The trauma is huge.”

He said billions of dollars will be needed to restore the infrastructure and to help residents rebuild their homes. And it will not happen overnight.

One of the latest JRS projects is in Sharya, a Yazidi town of about 25,000 people that hosts a camp of about 16,000 people who had escaped from Sinjar in 2014. Several hundred other Yazidi families have set up improvised dwellings in seven villages surrounding Sharya.

“Our teams meet survivors of ISIS there, including women who had been forced into sexual slavery, who would have witnessed or been subjected to extreme sexual violence and dehumanising, multiple rapes. It is a tremendous form of hacking away not only at a person’s dignity, which is hugely important, but it is also trying to erase the culture and collective dignity of the Yazidi people.”

Some mothers witnessed their husbands and sons being slaughtered, or being taken away and never seen again. Many families have had their girls abducted. In some of the places that have been retaken from ISIS, mass graves have been discovered.

“This is a huge crime. This is genocide,” said Fr Cassar. “So our first priority is to try to be an instrument that can uphold and restore their dignity. This is hugely important and extremely difficult.”

In the post-ISIS phase, he says, people have to be helped and encouraged to rebuild their lives, and to keep not only vaguely hoping but able to do something. “All our pro­jects, whether it is the education of children or providing livelihood and skills training for people, or psycho-social support – in a way all of that could be irrelevant, or secondary, if the people lose hope.

“People have been disappointed so many times, over and over again. In recent history Iraq was invaded one and twice over, with a promise that ‘now you will be free’, and now this is the result. Many say: ‘We can’t take this anymore. We don’t see any future’.

“When this hopelessness gets at people I am very saddened. And yet we continue to strive to provide services that can keep people hoping.”

The migration crisis

JRS’s work with internally displaced people is very much aimed at encouraging them to stay in their own countries. But Fr Cassar admits that fami­lies sometimes come to the conclusion that it is no longer viable for them to live in a situation where safety and security are lacking, and they become refugees seeking to rebuild their lives in other countries.

“If we believe that the place of refugees and displaced people is in tents then there is something fundamentally wrong in the way we think about human beings. The average length of time people are spending as forcibly displaced is 17 years. This means that a child may be born and grow up in a situation of displacement until he or she becomes an adult – growing up in displacement, in camps, moving from one house to another, being insecure, one year here, two years there. This has a massive effect on a human being.”

Turning to Europe’s migration crisis, Fr Cassar agrees that the issue is a very complicated challenge, and that there are security issues that need to be addressed. But he says very often, Europe, and now even the US, adopts a very blinkered, inward-looking vision. He says there is need for a broader vision of humanity that allows for migration to be managed, rather than crisis-managed.

The basic moral principle we have to adopt here to safeguard our socie­ties is to safeguard humanity, not to safeguard what we have termed as our security

 

“There isn’t the political will. Very often far-right political parties try to exploit the migration situation to instil fear in people to gain power.” This, he adds, is shameful.

“It is challenging first and foremost for the people who have to leave their countries to seek safety and security elsewhere. We are talking about forced migration. There is no fun in trekking all across southeast Europe to try to reach central Europe. When we choose to leave migrants stranded at the borders of Europe in freezing temperatures, that is not the way to deal with migration.”

Taken as a whole, Europe has the world’s largest economy, so when it says it is unable to manage the refugee situation differently than it is, “that is shameful”. He points out that Iraq’s Kurdistan region is hosting 250,000 Syrian people. Lebanon, which has a population of just over four million, is hosting 1.25 million Syrians; and Turkey has close to three million.

“The basic moral principle we have to adopt here to safeguard our socie­ties is to safeguard humanity, not to safeguard what we have termed as our security. When any society chooses to look the other way from a person in need, we compromise our own humanity more than any other way in which the safety and national security of any country could be compromised. We are fundamentally wrong and we are getting into trouble.”

‘Corruption and arms are at the root of evil’

One often hears that the long-term solution to the migration crisis is to stop the cause of emigration in the source countries. Yet the problems of Iraq will not be over when ISIS is defeated, Fr Cassar said. “Until the root causes that gave rise to ISIS and al-Qaeda before them are addressed, the situation will not significantly improve for people.

“Very often, forced migration is the result of war, decisions on the ground and of corrupt politicians in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Corruption must be addressed.

“A lot of people in Iraq say we have a huge problem of corruption. And as happens in other places, this is evident to everyone except those who are in power.

Very often, forced migration is the result of war, decisions on the ground and of corrupt politicians in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere

“But very often it is either foreign countries or multinational corporations based in Europe and the US which choose to deal with corrupt governments for their own ends.

“We cannot choose to close our eyes to this corruption, which is to a certain extent also of our own making due to loopholes that we conveniently overlook.”

Certain EU member states that are among the highest exporters of armaments were “the very countries that are most vociferous about refugees coming to their shores. This is not only shameful, it is despicable, sinful, inhuman and evil”.

Efforts must be made to end the arms trade, he insisted. “When it was announced that air strikes would take place in Syria and more troops would be used, the shares in companies in this industry rose sharply. This is symptomatic of a world order that is intrinsically disordered. But the victims are not in our countries, they are elsewhere.

“If instead of investing in peace we invest in war we will always end up with the victims of war knocking at our doors.”

Funding of assistance

The budget of JRS Iraq runs into millions of dollars and all the fundraising is coordinated by its regional office in Beirut.

The funds mainly come from private donations to Jesuit sources and through international development donor agencies such as Misereor and Caritas España.

JRS does not receive government funds, so as to maintain its independence.

JRS invests a lot in schooling, which is very costly. “But we believe that internally displaced people need to learn, and not just subjects, but also how to think for themselves, to have hope, to be independent. It is a way of giving hope.”

Asked in what ways people in Malta could help, Fr Cassar replies: “First and foremost, by praying. But secondly by supporting, which also means to enable people to survive.”

A lot of Iraqi Christians have survived so far thanks to the massive help that the Church – Catholic, Orthodox, and other denominations – are providing.

JRS – a sign of peace in Iraq

Jesuit Refugee Services is an NGO that works with refugees and internally displaced people around the world – accompanying them, serving them, and advocating for their rights. In Fr Cassar’s words: “JRS seeks to be a concrete sign of peace, of people living together and res­pecting each other as human beings of different religious beliefs who are giving a service to people in need.”

In Iraq, the first JRS presence was set up in October 2014 in Erbil, Kurdistan, northern Iraq, by fellow Maltese Jesuit Fr Tony Calleja, the JRS assistant regional director and Lebanon country director, based in Beirut, Lebanon.

It now runs projects in Ankawa and Ozal City/Kasnazan in the Erbil governorate, and in Sharya and Araden and their respective surrounding villages in the Duhok governorate.

It provides four different services: family visits, including providing emergency cash assistance and distributing food and other essential items; providing non-formal education for children aged four up to 18; running training courses for adults; and offering support to women.

JRS has also runs a professional mental health and psychosocial support project in two centres in Erbil, which this year will be replicated in two new centres in Duhok governorate.

We want to move into the Ninevah Plain, and inshallah (God willing), Mosul

JRS employs 156 staff, all Iraqis but for a few foreigners, of all faiths – Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Yazidi and Shabak, and serves people of all religious backgrounds and ethnicity.

Family visits are the main way that JRS gets in touch with people who are vulnerable. Its teams systematically visit families living in shared rent­ed or temporary housing, makeshift, unfinished buildings, camps and tents. In the past 26 months it has carried out some 13,000 family visits.

“Through the family visits we get to know people on a more personal basis,” said Fr Cassar. “We keep records of the families visited and their needs, identifying the most vulnerable according to a set of vulnerability criteria, based on our experience in Middle East countries. Every month we allocate a budget to help a number of families and individuals in every location for things related to health, rent, medicines, emergency expenses, transportation for children to be able to go to school, and many other things we identify according to the criteria.”

Since Fr Cassar arrived in Iraq last year, the number of JRS projects have risen fourfold and the staff doubled. Asked about his future plans he replies: “We want to move into the Ninevah Plain, and inshallah (God willing), Mosul.”

JRS is even being asked to open projects in towns outside the Kurdish region where there is no Christian presence. “Displaced Muslim people want us to accompany them also when they return back to their homes and ask us to set up a project there – I take this is a compliment. But I ask them: ‘Do you know we are a Christian organisation?’ And they say: ‘Yes, we know’.”