JULY 2020

Freedom Rider:
The Chaldean Flag Kid
BY RUTHANNE ASHKAR
If you live or drive in the Macomb/Oakland
County area of Southeast Michigan, chances
are you may have encountered young
Christian Mansoor weaving his way through
traffic on a bicycle adorned with a large Iraqi
flag proudly fluttering in the breeze.
Christian, a first-generation American who
will be entering 10th grade in the fall, says he first
thought of attaching a flag to his bicycle when he
was about 12 years old. His original flag wore stars
and stripes to display his love for his homeland
and support for all who serve in its military.
Eventually Christian’s knowledge of the
plight of Chaldeans still suffering in the Middle
East inspired him to substitute the national flag
of Iraq for its American counterpart. Although
Christian was born in the U.S. and is proud to
be an American, he feels a strong emotional
attachment to the war-torn country where his
father was born and then left as an immigrant
with his family when he was still a child.
For Christian, his flag-bearing bicycle is not
only a show of support for suffering Iraqis, but also
a vehicle for increasing awareness of their plight
and facilitating important dialogue that serves to
educate his fellow Americans about foreign issues
not usually covered by mainstream media.
Chaldeans living in the Middle East have
experienced several major upheavals in the years
since Christian’s grandparents left Iraq to settle
in the United States. In order to fully understand
what fuels Christian’s passion for their plight, you’d
have to be aware of the tumultuous history and turbulent
events that have taken place in the country
of Iraq during his own short lifetime.
Prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003, Chaldeans living
in Iraq had benefited from an amicable relationship
with Sunni president Saddam Hussein. The situation
became far more tenuous when U.S. President
George W. Bush made a conscious decision to ignore
U.S. intelligence warnings from the CIA about a guy
named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian criminal
who had been radicalized in prison and went on to
create a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
CIA agents, who had been observing al-Zarqawi’s
activities after his release from prison, became
alarmed as they saw him begin to assemble an increasingly
larger group of jihadis committed to a
radical Islamic ideology. In the wake of the 9/11
terrorist attack in New York City, those in charge
dismissed the CIA’s concern regarding the potential
threat posed by al-Zarqawi and focused instead
on going after Saddam Hussein.
Al-Zarqawi saw the Iraq War as the perfect opportunity
to make a name for himself by moving his
operation to Baghdad ahead of the U.S. invasion,
joining al Qaeda and proceeding to orchestrate a
series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks that resulted
in “turning an insurgency against U.S. troops
into a Shia-Sunni civil war.” Unfortunately, Christians
and other minorities got caught in the crossfire.
By 2004, the year that Christian Mansoor was
born, the ISIS attacks on Iraq’s tiny Christian minority
had steadily increased and eventually led to
the bombing of five Christian churches in Baghdad
and Mosul. The United Nations Refugee Commission
announced at the time that Iraqi Christians
had begun to flee the country in record numbers.
Some Chaldeans who fled as refugees told stories
of having their children kidnapped and held
for ransom by gangs of radical Islamists whose reign
of terror went unchecked in the lawlessness that
followed in the wake of the toppling of Saddam
Hussein’s government.
Al-Zarqawi was eventually eliminated in
2006 by joint U.S. Forces but by then the country
was in so much chaos that his absence did
little to reign in the terrorist activities of his ardent
followers who changed their name to the
Islamic State (IS) after his death.
In the spring of 2011, when Christian was six
years old, the youth in neighboring Syria rose up
against the ruling regime during what came to
be known as the Arab Spring. By 2013, the year
Christian turned nine, militarized IS combatants
from Iraq had crossed the border into Syria and
changed their name once again, this time to the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, better known as
ISIS. In Syria their numbers continued to grow
as online recruiting tactics lured foreign radicals
into joining them from a variety of countries including
Britain and the United States.
The expansion of ISIS into Syria struck a
second blow to Iraqi Christians who had found
refuge in Syria after fleeing from persecution
in Iraq. Many who had been waiting for the
U.S. Embassy in Damascus to issue the visas
they had been promised had already seen their
hopes dashed when the Embassy was forced to
close because of the Syrian revolution. Now
they found themselves face to face once again
with the militant jihadis who had forced them
into leaving Iraq in the first place.
By June of 2014, when Christian was still
nine years old, ISIS in Iraq had taken control
of one third of the country with leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi declaring the creation of
an Islamic State in Mosul and naming himself its
caliph. The reign of terror that followed included
rape, abductions, executions, mass murder, pillaging,
extortion, seizure of state resources and smuggling,
forcing Iraqi Christians who chosen to stay
in northern Syria to flee to Erbil in the south.
About the time young Christian Mansoor decided
to attach an Iraqi flag to his bicycle in the U.S.,
allied forces were already earnestly pursuing the
elimination of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In December
of 2017, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared
the mission that had begun in 2015 complete.
Since then the nation of Iraq has made slow but
steady progress towards reclaiming their ravaged cities
and establishing a government that will hopefully
do its best to meet the needs of all of its people.
When asked what message he would like to
convey to CN readers Christian said he hoped
that he would see a time when “all ethnicities are
treated equally.”
Although Christian may not understand all of
what transpired in Iraq, or the politics involved, he
does understand the need for education and dialogue
and will continue to exercise his freedom to
wave his flag in support of those ideals.
22 CHALDEAN NEWS JULY 2020