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Warning to the West
US, Britain are courting disaster, prelate says

In a provocative interview with the Fides news service, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Catholic population warned that the United States and Great Britain are risking a new outbreak of violence in the Middle East by continuing harsh sanctions on Iraq.

Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, spoke to Fides shortly after bombing raids on February 16 and 22, which caused two deaths and injured 20 people. In the past three years, 323 people have been reportedly killed, and thousands injured, in air strikes by American and British planes enforcing a “no-fly zone” in Iraqi air space—a policy set by those two countries without any UN mandate. 

Religious leaders in Iraq have frequently complained that international sanctions on their country—set in place to punish the regime of Saddam Hussein —have in effect punished ordinary citizens, causing widespread poverty and hunger. The Vatican, too, has repeatedly criticized the sanctions. “The Vatican, France, Italy, and Russia have condemned the use of force,” the Chaldean Patriarch said. “And we—the Church of Baghdad—do the same.

“I am afraid that if the USA and Britain continue this way, the whole of the Middle East will be set on fire,” Patriach Raphael continued. “The whole of the Arab world is now against the Americans and the British, and ready to commit violence against the USA and Britain in their own countries.

Asked what the international sanctions had accomplished, the Patriarch answered: “Nothing—and even the Americans admit this. The Iraqi government distributes rice, sugar, oil, tea: the harsher the embargo, the more generous the government in donations and rations.” He said that he has appealed to Catholic leaders in the US and Britain to help bring an end to the sanctions and the air strikes.