By the Rivers of Babylon

by Wesley Kawato

By the rivers of Babylon is the place where much of biblical history has happened. Today this land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is called Iraq. This is where the Garden of Eden was probably located. Archeologists have found the ruins of Ur in this region. Ur was the home of Abraham before he ventured into the Promised Land. Much later Iraq became a place of exile for the Jews after Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

Iraq has been a place of both judgment and blessing for God's people. The Tower of Babel was located here. This was where God scattered humanity by confusing mankind's languages. Much later, after the resurrection of Christ, Iraq became a safe haven for persecuted Christians fleeing from the pagan Roman Empire.

Iraq and the Early Church
Prior to Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312, the Sassanid Empire (today Iran and Iraq) welcomed Christians with open arms. In those days Rome and Sassania shared a long border, and were in a constant state of conflict. After the Roman emperor began to support the Church in the rival empire, the Sassanids feared Christians might be loyal to Rome. They slaughtered thousands of Christians.

Such sudden reversals have been common in Iraq. At times parts of Iraq have had a Christian majority. At other times this land has been almost devoid of believers in Christ.

Today only three percent of Iraq is Christian. Most of them belong to the Assyrian Church, which traces its ancestry to Roman era Christians who'd settled in the Sassanid Empire. Less than half of this group is Evangelical in doctrine.

The Rise of Islam in Iraq
So how did Iraq go (once again) from being a refuge for the faithful to becoming a land of terror for Christians? The trouble started with the founding of Islam in AD 622. Within 10 years of this date, Arab armies of Muslim converts had conquered what is now Iraq and Iran. Many Christians fled from Iraq. Those who didn't were marginalized, forced to pay high taxes and forbidden to witness to Muslims. What saved the Assyrian Church from further persecution was the disunity of their conquerors. When Mohammed died in AD 632, he left no clear successor. The Shi'ites chose as their leader Hussein, Mohammed's grandson. Those who rejected Hussein's leadership formed the Sunni sect.

For 50 years an uneasy truce existed between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. In AD 680 a dispute over territory broke the truce, resulting in the Battle of Karbala. Hussein was killed while leading the Shi'ite army. The resulting bitterness made the Sunni/Shi'ite split permanent. This sectarian conflict continues to plague Iraq today.

Over the next several centuries the various people groups in Iraq united to fight off invaders. First came the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, and then the armies of Tamerlane. Neither conqueror controlled Iraq for very long.

Then came a conqueror the Iraqis couldn't expel. Prior to 1453 the Ottoman Empire was a small kingdom in Central Turkey, a minor power no one took seriously. That year Emperor Mehmet II conquered Constantinople. Within a century the Ottoman Empire took control of much of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Ottomans ruled Iraq until 1918. Their downfall began when they entered World War I in 1914 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Britain's Rule in Iraq
Britain and France divided the Middle East between themselves after the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918. Iraq fell under British control. British attempts to rule the land directly resulted in local uprisings. In 1920 Britain decided to rule Iraq by proxy. They chose Amir Faisal, an Arab prince, to be King of Iraq. Many Iraqis did not like the Faisal family, so there were more uprisings. British troops, aided by pro-Faisal militias, crushed the revolts. By 1923 Iraq was pacified, and the British granted Iraq independence under the rule of Faisal I.

Faisal I inherited a divided land, thanks to the 1918 British/French political settlement that fixed Iraq's borders. That treaty lumped together people groups that didn't want to live together. The Sunnis of Central Iraq hated the Shi'ites of Southern Iraq. The Kurds, who dominated Northern Iraq, had no love for either people group. The Kurds trace their ancestry back to the Medes, one of the two people groups who had made up the Medo-Persian Empire. The Medo-Persians had conquered Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian Empire centuries before Christ.

Language differences exacerbated Iraq's ethnic divisions. Although the Sunnis and Shi'ites spoke Arabic, a Semitic language, the Kurds spoke Kurdish, an Indo-Aryan language similar to Persian. Complicating things further, the Turkmens, descendents of the Ottoman administrators who'd settled in Iraq, spoke Turkmen, an Altaic language similar to Turkish.

For thirty-five years the Faisal Dynasty did its best to hold Iraq together. The discovery of oil in the Kurdish north and the Shi'ite south only made Iraq's ethnic divisions worse. The various people groups fought over oil-rich land.

Pan Arab Movements and the Rise of the Baath Party
The 1950s saw the rise of numerous Pan-Arab unification parties. One such party in Egypt staged a revolt that brought to power Gamal Nasser in 1956. In Iraq the Pan-Arabic movement took the form of the Baath Party. That party had strong support within the Iraqi army. In 1958 the Baath Party teamed up with other anti-monarchist parties to overthrow the Faisal Dynasty in a military coup.

By 1958 the people of Iraq were tired of ethnic strife and the vision of Arab unification appealed to many. Efforts to make that dream a reality provoked a Kurdish rebellion in the north that they hoped would lead to independence from the Iraqi Arabs. Continued instability led to increasingly repressive measures. Iraq's coalition of governing parties couldn't agree on how to deal with the Kurdish problem. Political parties clashed, and in 1968 a second military coup gave the Baath Party sole control of Iraq. It was now a one-party dictatorship. All other political parties were disbanded or absorbed into the Baath Party. The new government ended the war with the Kurds by granting them local autonomy. After the restoration of peace, the Baath Party split into rival factions, which fought each other for supremacy.

The 1968 coup had elevated Saddam Hussein to the position of Vice-President of Iraq. Hussein led a radical faction that borrowed ideas from Hitler and Stalin. His vision for Iraq was that of a socialist state, complete with a secret police. In 1979, a third military coup made Saddam Hussein President of Iraq. He quickly purged the Baath Party of all democratic elements. Many party officials were executed by firing squads.

A Series of Wars for Iraq
That year also saw a revolution in neighboring Iran that brought to power a Shi'ite theocracy. The new Iranian government began fomenting a rebellion among the Shi'ites of southern Iraq, creating tensions between the two countries. In 1980 those tensions led to war.

In 1980 the United States was still smarting from the Iran Hostage Crisis and quickly allied with Iraq. France also supplied weapons for Hussein's army. The war ended in a stalemate in 1988. Iraq lost over 100,000 young men. Thousands of women were left widowed or without anyone to marry. The "victory" over Iran inflated Hussein's ego. A miscommunication by the U.S. State Department made him believe he could invade Kuwait in 1990 without repercussions. Hussein was shocked when America protested the invasion.

In 1991, the United States, aided by several NATO and Arab countries, invaded Iraq. Many Iraqi tanks were destroyed and thousands of men died, worsening Iraq's gender imbalance. The peace settlement required Iraq to give up her weapons of mass destruction. Hussein reneged on that part of the treaty, leading to sanctions imposed by the United Nations. The resulting famine caused mass starvation in Iraq. Thousands more died. Negative publicity by the world media led to a relaxation of sanctions. Iraq was allowed to sell some oil for food. But it wasn't enough to stop the famine or the hyperinflation that wiped out the middle class. Between 1991 and 2001 the United States was willing to let the sanctions starve Iraq into submission, no longer having the will to fight a new war.

The September 11th terrorist attacks in the U.S. changed all that. American intelligence had suspected for years that Iraq had provided Al Qaida with money, intelligence and training facilities. This led to a new invasion in April of 2003, leading to the downfall of Saddam's regime.

But Hussein and his sons escaped capture and went underground to fight a guerilla war. Then the coalition scored a major victory when they killed Hussein's two sons in a firefight in Mosul, ending the dictator's hopes of founding a dynasty. Saddam's hopes of regaining power were dashed when he was captured on December 13th.

Despite the ongoing guerilla war, the work of reconstruction continues. Electrical generation has surpassed prewar levels and schools and hospitals have been reopened according to the New York Times. A provisional government now struggles to write a democratic constitution that will be accepted by the various ethnic groups. Yet jobs are scarce and security is elusive, especially in the central part of Iraq.

Iraq needs our prayers like never before!
Pray for peace, so that the country may be rebuilt and missionary work may not be hindered. The thousands of orphans in Iraq and the shortage of doctors to treat wounded veterans and civilians creates an open door for medical missionaries and child relief workers. May God's Church take advantage of these open doors with zeal and sensitivity. Pray for spiritual hunger among all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups that will be satisfied by the Bread of Life.