Emanuel Khoshaba al-Qasrani
President of the Assyrian Patriotic Party
Former Member of Parliament
The Christians of Iraq, or of Mesopotamia in the broader sense, are no newcomers to this land, which the Tigris and the Euphrates have watered since the dawn of history. They are the heirs of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, and they go by various denominational names: Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Assyrians. Shortly after the First World War, the Armenians joined them. They had fled for their lives from the massacres committed against Christians when the Ottoman Empire declared jihad on them in 1915. The killings came to be known as the Armenian massacres, or Seferberlik, even though Assyrians were among the victims too. The Armenians who escaped settled in northern Iraq and in most of the country's major cities, including Baghdad and Mosul, while others found refuge in Syria and Lebanon.
Yet this part of the world, meaning present-day Iraq, has always been a theater of conflict. The ancient Persian and Greek empires fought over it, and it later passed through the Islamic conquests (as they are known to history) and the Ottoman occupation of Mesopotamia before the British occupied it in 1917 and Baghdad fell. For all those centuries the land was not yet Iraq in the modern sense. It became so only when the Kingdom of Iraq was founded on August 23, 1921, following the coronation of King Faisal I.
These events, stretching across hundreds of years, cast a long shadow over the Christians of Iraq in ancient and modern times alike. It should also be remembered that the first Christian church, built in the first century AD, was the Church of Kokhe, whose ruins still stand in al-Mada'in, south of Baghdad. It traces its origins to St. Thomas the Apostle, one of the disciples of Christ (to Him be glory), and to his disciple Mar Mari, who established it as the foundation stone of the Apostolic Church of the East. The Church of Kokhe thus predates the Church of Rome by more than a decade: the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (al-Mada'in) was held in AD 50, whereas the Church in Rome was founded in AD 60.
As noted earlier, the Land of the Two Rivers has endured wave after wave of invasion, each one further shrinking the Christian population until it reached its present level. Even so, their historical monuments and their influence on society can still be seen today, though perhaps they have not received the attention they deserve in accounts of the region's history and the movements of its peoples.
Najaf Governorate is a case in point. The area of al-Hira was once among the foremost Christian centers of the Middle Euphrates, and according to government reports, some 30 to 40 sites or more are officially registered there. The Umm Khashm cemetery in Najaf is likewise regarded as one of the largest Christian cemeteries in the region. Karbala Governorate, for its part, is home to the al-Aqiser Church, whose origins are documented in reports and research by Orientalists, including Gertrude Bell, the British traveler and scholar of the East who is buried in Iraq.
Iraq's population data show how sharply the number of Christians has fallen, from the end of the nineteenth century up to the most recent census, which the Iraqi government conducted in 2024, even though serious doubts have been raised about that census's accuracy. Take, for example, the first census carried out after the British occupation. Published in British records, it covered the three provinces that then made up the country (Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra), and its results for 1920 were as follows:
| Religious group | Population |
|---|---|
| Sunni Muslims | 1,146,685 |
| Shia Muslims | 1,494,015 |
| Jews | 87,488 |
| Christians | 78,792 |
| Other religions | 42,302 |
| Total | 2,849,282 |
In other words, Christians made up roughly 2.77 percent of the total population. Official Iraqi statistics later recorded approximately 97,000 Christians in 1934. By 1957 the number had risen to 204,226 out of a total population of 6,299,000, or about 3.25 percent, an increase that reflects natural population growth.
The last count before the former regime fell in the wake of the 2003 US invasion drew on the 1997 census. It put Iraq's population, excluding the Kurdistan Region, at an estimated 25.6 million. Of these, Christians numbered 1.5 million according to church records, or 1.2 million according to a US State Department report on religious freedom. The lower figure alone represents about 4.68 percent of the population.
As for the 2024 census, even the most optimistic estimate puts the number of Christians at no more than 250,000. They live throughout the country but are concentrated mainly in the Nineveh Plain, extending into the Kurdistan Region. Against a total population of 46 million, that is a mere 0.54 percent. The figure shows how much the country has lost of this community, which differs from the majority in both ethnicity and faith.
The Present and the Future: A Comprehensive View
Having revisited the history of the Christian presence in Iraq (Mesopotamia) and compared its past numbers with its actual size today, we must now turn to the real reasons that have made Christians a people of emigrants. They chose to leave their homes and save their lives rather than stay in the land of their fathers and forefathers.
After 2003, extremist Islamist groups carried out organized attacks on Christians. They targeted individuals in deliberate operations with one of two aims: seizing their property and real estate, or kidnapping them for ransom to finance these terrorist organizations. Christians were the weakest link in Iraqi society as a whole. One reason was that they were so widely dispersed. Another was the fatwas that permitted confiscating their property, taking them hostage, and even killing them, on the grounds that they shared the religion of the (occupying) American forces.
Kidnappings, killings, and bombings followed in quick succession. Among them were the attack on buses carrying university students in Nineveh Governorate on May 2, 2010; the assassination of Father Ragheed Ganni and three deacons on June 3, 2006; the abduction and murder of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho in Nineveh in 2008; and the assault on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad on October 1, 2010. The campaign reached its peak when the terrorist organization ISIS overran Nineveh Governorate and the Nineveh Plain, forcing more than 125,000 people to flee toward the Kurdistan Region to escape being kidnapped, killed, or taken captive.
As the old saying goes, these atrocities were the straw that broke the camel's back. They came amid a deteriorating economic and security situation, and at a time when the Iraqi government, lacking a clear vision, proved unable to contain the crisis. Most Christians were left disheartened, and their frustration has only deepened because laws that directly affect them are still on the books, unchanged. Consider just a few of these laws.
Article 26 of the National Card Law No. 3 of 2016 stipulates that "minor children shall follow the religion of whichever parent converts to Islam." Article 14 of the Municipal Revenues Law No. 1 of 2014 states in its first paragraph that "the import, manufacture, and sale of alcoholic beverages of all kinds are prohibited," while its second paragraph provides for "penalties against anyone who acts in violation of this provision, with a fine of no less than 10 million Iraqi dinars and no more than 25 million dinars." Then there is Article 125 of the current 2005 Constitution, which concerns administrative, cultural, and political rights. The law needed to implement it has been awaited since the Constitution first came into force, yet it has never been enacted, nor even seriously considered.
Moreover, Christians are denied equal opportunity in public appointments and employment, in filling security posts, and even in gaining admission to military and security colleges and other sought-after institutions. All this, compounded by an uncertain future, has turned our Christian people into emigrants in waiting. They look abroad for the safety they have lost and for a crust of bread. Above all, they look for the dignity they have been denied as citizens in their own land.
Meanwhile, we keep seeing and hearing Iraqi governments call on displaced Christians to return and resettle in Iraq, even after they have emigrated and built new lives in their adopted countries. We do not doubt the intentions of successive Iraqi governments, least of all those of Mr. Ali al-Zaidi, the current prime minister, who has promised a great deal to bring Christians home. Still, one logical question presents itself: would any Christian emigrant be persuaded to return on the strength of such promises? He has seen no change in the laws that affect him and his family, and equal opportunity in public appointments is still the rare exception. Private land also continues to be appropriated and distributed under Resolutions No. 41 and No. 117 of the dissolved Revolutionary Command Council of Saddam Hussein's defunct regime.
Although these resolutions have been void throughout Iraq since 2003, they are still enforced in Nineveh. Only a few months ago, on June 30, 2026, the Nineveh Provincial Council issued Resolution No. 168 authorizing construction. The resolution flagrantly violates Article 23 (Third, B) of the Iraqi Constitution, which categorically prohibits any Iraqi from acquiring property if doing so would lead to demographic change. Furthermore, it runs counter to Federal Supreme Court Decision No. 65 of 2013, which banned demographic change and land distribution outright as unconstitutional.
What I want to stress here is that the return of the displaced and of emigrants will not come about through good intentions. That holds for the government, the ruling parties (if they have any), religious institutions, and even individuals. Suffering and marginalization are ever-present, and no Christian can advance in government or public life unless he becomes a tool in someone else's hands. The evidence is plentiful and recent. The last parliamentary elections, held in November 2025, have perhaps brought many untold stories about Christians to light. Not least among them is how the results played out for the five Christian members of the current Council of Representatives. By contrast, few people hear the independent voices that rightly demand the administrative, national, political, and social rights of Christians. They carry neither power nor influence, and they lack even the basic means to make their presence felt.
How, then, can the displaced come back when their homes and property are in the hands of others? Many of these properties were taken over under a religious ruling that classifies them as "property of unknown ownership" (majhul al-malik), and many have since been sold. Only a tiny fraction has been returned to its owners, and even that happened only through connections with people of influence. Worse still, an organized campaign to sell off all Christian assets and community institutions is still under way. Clergymen or Christian figures act as its front (and I would underline the word "Christian" more than once).
The outlook is murky, and even if we were to start today, setting things right would be the work of many years. Is there cause for pessimism about the future? To a degree, yes. But as long as present conditions stay as they are, many of our people whom we meet abroad tell us they have decided not to return. There, their future and their children's future are secure, far from the ideological pressure of one faction or another, whether religious or political.
When the ruling parties speak of Christians as Iraq's indigenous people, their words are little more than a decorative frame, designed to flatter the image of the politician, the party, and perhaps the entire political process in Iraq. Once the cameras are switched off, the reality is quite different.
And yet, a verse by the classical poet al-Tughra'i comes to mind:
I soothe my soul with hopes, and keep watch for their coming;
how narrow life would be, were it not for hope's wide horizon.
We do not want our Christian people, in all their churches and denominations, to abandon the land they have so often defended and to which they gave its very name, the Land of the Two Rivers. We do not want them to live on only as a memory in people's minds or as pictures in a photo album. Serious studies have been carried out, the vision is there, and a mechanism for recovering everything that was lost is already in place. All of this, however, remains captive to the political will of the ruling parties, wherever they may be. Nor do we want this deep-rooted part of the Iraqi nation to be held hostage, or used as a card to be played only when it serves someone's interests.
Until that day comes, we look on with hope, and we wait.