Magic Statistics

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has acknowledged that Iraq could break apart into three separate countries.

The possible break-up of Iraq into three separate states was acknowledged for the first time by Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday as she scaled back expectations of what could be achieved before British and US forces leave.

The growing pessimism in Whitehall over the prospects for Iraq's future came as the country's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, urged Britain and the US not to "cut and run".

Mrs Beckett, after talks in London with Mr Salih, accepted that the invasion of Iraq might come to be judged as a "foreign policy disaster" for Britain.

Iraq seems a chaotic mess today as Islamist violence spreads.  Yet the invasion brought down the sadistic tyrant Saddam Hussein, so it shouldn't be considered a total "disaster".

A Bill partitioning Iraq into its three main regions — the Kurdish north, the predominantly Sunni central area, and the mainly Shia south — is before the country's parliament. The idea has been floated in Washington by advisers to President George W Bush, but the British Government has previously insisted that it is not on the agenda.

It’s doubtful that Christians would be safe in any of those three areas.

Christians in Iraq are increasingly being targeted for persecution.  Over 90% of Assyrian Christians have fled the country.

A United Nations survey reports that more than 200,000 Assyrian Christians — members of an ancient form of Christianity born in the Holy Land of the Mesopotamia — have fled Iraq since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, leaving only 20,000 remaining in the country, according to the U.S. State Department. Their exodus sped up in August 2004, after the start of the terrorist bombing campaign against Christian churches and a hike in kidnappings and assassinations.

Life as a refugee in Jordan is precarious.

Conditions for Iraqi Christians in Jordan are poor. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has documented the Assyrian Christians' plight in Jordan as among the worst in the country: Refugees can't work, get educated or receive any other public benefit.

"Iraqi forced migrants have created inside Jordan a group of deprived, invisible migrants," the 2002 reports states. "And the country is unwilling to target any international aid for Iraq refugees," adding that, "they probably fear a relief program would improve the migrants' social condition, attracting other Iraqis."

h/t for Assyrian International News Agency: Persecution Blog

Previous related posts:

• Orthodox priest kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq
• Here’s a bright idea: Hand Iraq over to the UN
• The “Talibanisation” of Iraq

But it sounds like he’s dithering about it.

The possibility of children being sexually exploited or abused in the community of Bountiful is of more concern than the issue of polygamy, B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal said Monday.

But Mr. Oppal also said he is not ignoring the fact polygamy charges may be available to Crown prosecutors for some members in the southeastern B.C. community.

“The fundamental issue here is sexual exploitation of children, sexual abuse of children and sexual assaults — if all that is taking place,” Mr. Oppal told reporters.

“That is more important than anything else. I'm not ignoring the fact there may be polygamy charges available there but it's much more important I think we can all agree, that we prevent any child abuse.”

An RCMP report on Bountiful is under review by the Attorney General’s office, following which charges may be laid.

Mr Oppal doesn’t know whether child abuse is occurring at Bountiful, but everyone knows that polygamy is.  The Globe and Mail states that as fact, referring to “the polygamist community” without the usual “allegedly” qualifier.  And there’s this:

While polygamy is illegal in Canada, the practice has been going on in Bountiful for many decades.

So, why can’t the province bust ‘em now for polygamy while the investigation into child abuse continues?

This story appears the day after more publicity was given to law professor Rebecca Cook’s study for the federal Justice Department criticising Canada’s failure to enforce the anti-polygamy law.

Canada is required to enforce the law because it is a signatory to numerous international treaties and conventions such as the United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
. . .
Ms. Cook says the harm to girls in Bountiful "could be particularly serious, given that some girls reportedly enter unions at as young as 14 or 15 years of age."

Sounds like child abuse to me.

Previous related posts:

• International human rights law obligates Canada to eliminate polygamy
• Enforce Canada’s polygamy laws
• BC polygamists send kids to public schools

My friend and fellow Yukon blogger Rebecca Stark has posted personal reflections on Carcross, Yukon, including photos of St Saviour’s Anglican Church.  Both her father-in-law and, later, her husband worked in the village of Carcross, located about 70 km south of Whitehorse.

My husband's father was in the Yukon long before we were. During the construction of the Alaska Highway, he left his wife and a couple of kids behind (Hubby wasn't born yet!) and came way up here for nine months to work construction while the road to Alaska was built. I'd always assumed he's worked in road construction, since he had a construction company with road building equipment, but hubby corrected me several years ago. His dad had done plumbing–his real trade–while he was up here. I asked hubby where he'd done plumbing, and he thought he'd plumbed the new highway camps built as the road went through.

Check it out!

St Saviour’s was built under the leadership of the first Bishop of Yukon William Carpenter Bompas and celebrated its centenary in August 2004.

Lebanon’s Christian population has been in decline for decades, while the proportion of Muslims has been rising.  Christians, once the vast majority, today comprise about 35% of the population and are probably outnumbered by Shi'ite Muslims alone.  Tom Bethell sees the same pattern elsewhere in the region.

The Catholic Archbishop of Algeria, interviewed recently by the New York Times, described "the ebbing of Christianity from North Africa's shores as Islam spreads across Europe." In 1958, there were more than 700 churches in the country where St. Augustine was born and died. Now there are about 20, and they are mostly empty. "The rest have been converted into mosques or cultural centers or have been abandoned." The archbishop says Mass for a remnant of 20 people.

In The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam (1997) Bat Ye'Or wrote that 13 percent of the Middle East was Christian a century ago. Today that figure may be as low as 2 percent.

Many commentators think a similar process of de-Christianisation has now begun in Europe.  Wishful dreams of atheists notwithstanding, it is Islam, not secular humanism, that is moving into the resultant spiritual and moral vacuum.

A RECENT STUDY SHOWED that the Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest threat since the Reformation. Its membership is in "terminal decline," much of it recent. What Henry VIII persecuted the modern world simply ignores. The faith is withering away. Meanwhile, the Church of England has devolved into a museum.
. . .
How to explain this decline? Nothing less than a book-length response would suffice. But here are a few thoughts. Enfeebled bishops, selected precisely for their feebleness, preside over dwindling flocks. Bishops have lost all authority and few listen to their public comments, which almost always deal with material (not spiritual) concerns.
. . .
Christianity has been under constant attack since the time of the Enlightenment and the attacks have come from within. In recent decades, mullahs and imams have hardly needed to say a word against Christianity. All the work was being done for them by critics, reformers, apostates, defectors. In some ways Muslims are actually more respectful of Christianity than the Church's internal foes. And Islam's spiritual leaders have not lost the faith, defective though it is in key areas.

Mr Bethell notes Christianity is being abandoned by materially prosperous Westerners (except in the United States, for some unexplained reason) and speculates that Muslims might abandon their ancestral faith as they also become wealthier.  Until Islamic societies implement secure private property rights and the rule of law, however, economic improvement is highly unlikely.

Previous related post: Much of the western world will disappear in our lifetimes