By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The United States has a duty to leave behind peace, not chaos, when troops are finally withdrawn from Iraq, said several Iraqi Church leaders.

“We desire, we ask, and we scream for peace and security,” Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad said in an interview with Vatican Radio, Aug. 19.

U.S. soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, help one another with their gear Aug. 15 near Nassiriya, Iraq, before they leave for Kuwait. Iraq signed a bilateral security agreement in 2008 that paved the way for a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011. CNS PHOTO/THAIER al-SUDANI/REUTERS

U.S. combat troops were scheduled to leave Iraq at the end of August, formally ending Operation Iraqi Freedom. About 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq until the end of 2011 to continue training and assisting Iraqi security forces.

Bishop Warduni said war does nothing but destroy everything. “There are no jobs, there are car bombs, kamikaze attacks and other acts of violence. If foreign troops leave, they have a duty to leave peace and security behind them,” he said.

Latin-rite Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad told the Italian Catholic news agency SIR Aug. 23 that promises of peace and democracy “have quickly evaporated.”

“The nation still finds it very hard to have a rule of law, to guarantee security, to rebuild infrastructure, to reduce poverty, to stop emigration and to kick-start the economy,” he said. “More important than the withdrawal is the reconstruction of Iraq — a project which unfortunately is very far from being carried out.”

Archbishop Sleiman said the war has caused far more problems than it has solved “and, for the Christian communities, (the war) has been deadly.”

The so-called postwar period after 2003 has really been a continuation of conflict “marked by anarchy, violence, mafia, corruption on all levels, massive exodus of peoples, ethnic-religious cleansing, kidnappings, and extortion,” he said.

Msgr. Philip Najim, the Chaldean Catholic Church’s representative to the Vatican, told Vatican Radio Aug. 21 that the war has also “caused the Iraqi people to lose faith in the international community.”

While the U.S. withdrawal is expected and “must be carried out,” now is not the time, he said.

The nations that made up the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq have a serious obligation to establish national security and to create a strong, cohesive, national military “that can truly protect the Iraqi nation and the Iraqi people,” he said.

“The Iraqi people need to have faith in the state” if it is to flourish in the future, he said. Until then, the country will continue to see its professional class of doctors, engineers and technicians flee the country, he added.

Bishop Warduni expressed concern about the political deadlock between Iraqi leaders who have not been able to form a government since parliamentary elections in March.

“It’s very difficult to live somewhere where there is no law and no government,” he said, adding that terrorist elements have been taking advantage of the lack of a stable central authority.

“The terrorists come and go as they please,” he said.

Overturning the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein in order to put democracy in its place did not work, said the Iraqi bishop.

“Democracy needs to be taught, it needs to be planted, not imported,” he said. He compared life in Iraq under Saddam as like living “in a huge jail.”

“And what happens when a prison is suddenly thrown open?” he asked. It is like a dam that opens without warning and unleashes huge waves of destruction, he said.

The only way for Iraq to begin anew is for all sides to set aside their partisan interests and focus on what is best for Iraq as a whole, he said.

The country needs to create a strong stable government that enforces the law, he said, and Iraqis need the assistance of the whole world “to help snuff out the wars.”

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