Boost for efforts to counter IS and aid Christians

A Canadian Jewish businessman has told The Tablet he has  overseen the rescue of more than 120 Christian and Yazidi girls kidnapped by so-called Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq.

Steve Maman, 42, an entrepreneur, founded the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) nearly a year ago after the jihadists overran the cities of Mosul and Sinjar, forcing more than 100,000 civilians, including virtually all the region’s Orthodox and Catholic population, to flee.

According to the UN, the jihadists took up to 7,000 Yazidi women and girls into slavery. An unknown number of Christian women and girls were also kidnapped. CYCI estimates that around 2,700 are still being held.

Mr Maman, who cites as a personal hero Oskar Schindler, the German who saved as many as 1,200 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, works closely with a team of negotiators based inside IS-held areas, who try to reunite the Yazidis with their families.

“We liberate children from their captors through the use of on-the-ground brokers,” he said.

The charity receives money for rescue missions from Mr Maman’s mainly Jewish business associates, who, he said, have been “remarkably generous”.

“This is a finite problem that can be solved with money,” said Mr Maman. “We need Christians to open up at the same rate as my Jewish friends have.”

CYCI collaborates with Anglican Canon Andrew White’s Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, which is providing shelter to hundreds of people who have fled IS.

Meanwhile in Australia, church leaders are exploring ways to help a Catholic university that is due to open for Christians and Yazidis from the Mosul region in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar Warda, was a guest at the twenty-fifth general assembly of the International Federation of Catholic Universities last month in Melbourne, where he sought assistance from delegates and the Australian Church. He said that establishing a university was “a way of fighting back against [IS] and saying we are not going to go away” and thanked the Australian bishops for a A$500,000 (£240,000) donation last year.

ACU’s director of identity and mission, Fr Anthony Casamento, told The Tablet that his university was exploring ways to help such as offering training, scholarships and internships.