4

The official objective of the American intervention in 2003 was to free the Iraqis from a dictatorship. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the situation of some of these Iraqis—the Christians—at the dawn of a war whose geopolitical considerations surpassed them. Christians have been present in Iraq since the beginning of Christianity. During Saddam Hussein’s era, Christians were relatively integrated into Iraqi society under the Baath Party, with its secular political framework. The Deputy Prime Minister at the time, Tariq Aziz, was Christian, and Saddam Hussein himself came from a religious minority in the country (Sunnism). However, since the 1991 war, the President of Iraq increasingly referred to Islam in order to unite the Iraqi people against the enemy. In 2003, American discourse presented a challenge for the Christians in Iraq. Indeed, when George W. Bush talked about a crusade, these Christians were seen as foreigners in their own country. Since then, Christians were targeted through threats and murders. Some of them chose to get involved in politics, while many others went into exile. The solution seems to be to build a new citizenship in Iraq, with a common denominator.