Since the beginning of the US war in Iraq, 750 thousand of the 25 million people in the country were Christian.

Now they are fleeing because of the rise of attacks by radicals, the US military and the criminal threats.

Most were Chaldean and Assyrian, but there also were Armenian, Jacobite and Greek Orthodox Christians and a small number of Protestants. Most of them lived either in Baghdad or in northern Iraq around Mosul.

The Iraq church is being identified with the US military who are considered Christian.

Yousef, a 30-year-old Chaldean Catholic who came here in August 2004, was the parish priest of Baghdad’s St. Pathion Church, with 800 families under his stewardship. Today, he occupies a simple office in Damascus, decorated with small portraits of St. Therese, the patron saint of his new church, cradling a bouquet of pink roses.

He says he actively supported the United States when coalition troops first entered Baghdad in April 2003 and helped organize community meetings on their behalf. Such support came with grave risks, and he narrowly missed two drive-by shooting attacks.

But when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal came to light, Yousef says, his view changed. Nor was he alone.

“Before that, Iraqis loved Americans,” said Yousef, his eyes lowered. “Directly after that — those photos, that scandal directly destroyed the dignity of Iraqis.”

Muneeb, an Iraqi Christian parishioner of St. Therese who didn’t reveal his last name because he said he did not want to attract local attention, said general resentment toward the Americans was transferred to Iraqi Christians. “Americans are Christians,” he said, “so we’re automatically considered to be part of them.”

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