May 6, 4:18 PM EDT
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Iraq's Christian Minority Flees Violence*

By RAVI NESSMAN
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across
Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a
multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.

Then, two months ago, al-Qaida gunmen kidnapped him and demanded that
his family convert to Islam or pay a $30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he
paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass
exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian minority.

"There is no future for us in Iraq," Mansour said.

Although Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before,
bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks
have taken on a far more personal tone. Many Christians are being
expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind,
police, human rights groups and residents said.

The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country's 26
million people, has little political or military clout to defend itself,
and some Islamic insurgents call Christians "crusaders" whose real
loyalty lies with U.S. troops.

Many churches are now nearly empty, with many of their faithful either
gone or too scared to attend. Only about 30 people attended this
Sunday's mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the relatively safe
Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, and only two dozen took communion in
the barren St. Mary's Church in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday.

As many as 50 percent of Iraq's Christians may already have left the
country, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom, a federal monitoring and advisory
group in Washington D.C.

"These groups face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and foreign
jihadis, and they also suffer pervasive discrimination and
marginalization at the hands of the national government, regional
governments, and para-state militias," said the report.

Islamic extremists have also targeted liquor stores, hair salons and
other Christian-owned businesses, saying they violate Islam, the report
said.

"This is not the culture of Iraqis or the nature of Iraqis. We have
lived during centuries together in a respectful attitude and
friendship," said Luwis Zarco, the Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk.

In much of the Middle East, Christians are a largely tolerated minority
that have achieved a measure of business and professional success, but
they are sometimes viewed with suspicion by their Muslim neighbors.

In Saddam-era Iraq, the country's 800,000 Christians - many of them
Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics
- were generally left alone. Many, such as Saddam Hussein's foreign
minister and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, reached the highest
levels of power.

But after U.S. forces toppled Saddam, insurgents launched a coordinated
bombing campaign in the summer of 2004 against Baghdad churches, sending
some Christians fleeing in fear.

A second wave of anti-Christian attacks hit last September after Pope
Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be anti-Islam. Church bombings
spiked and a priest in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped and
later found beheaded.

In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora
said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families, demanding they
either pay jizya - a special tax traditionally levied on non-Muslims -
or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100
years.

One man, Arakan Admon, was wounded in a drive-by shooting last week when
his family ignored the threats, relatives said.

In response to the threats, about 70 percent of Dora's Christians have
fled, police said.

"The terrorists want to turn Dora into a base to attack other Baghdad
neighborhoods," said Christian lawmaker Younadam Kana. "Criminal gangs
made use of the situation and they started to kidnap Christians and
demand ransom. It is a coalition between terrorists and criminals."

The southern neighborhood is a Sunni insurgent stronghold that has seen
frequent U.S. shelling under a security crackdown against the sectarian
violence.

In the northern city of Mosul, men began knocking on doors last month,
demanding that Christian families pay a $3,000 tax that would be used to
fight the U.S.-led forces, local residents said. Some paid; others fled.

Mansour, a 63-year-old retiree, said that while many other Christians
left, he chose to stay in his Amariyah neighborhood in western Baghdad.
He was hoping that the Baghdad security plan, which U.S.-led forces
launched on Feb. 14, would improve the situation.

"But the opposite happened," he said.

Mansour was kidnapped March 11 by gunmen who identified themselves as
al-Qaida. After 15 days in captivity, his family paid the ransom and
fled the country, leaving their home and electric appliance store
behind, Mansour said in a telephone interview from Syria.

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Associated Press reporter Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to
this story.