Liberated From The Islamic State, This Town Illustrates The Plight of Minorities in The Middle East
By: Flavius Mihaies
Tags: Syria, ISIS, Iraq, Minorities, Christianity

Liberated From The Islamic State, This Town Illustrates The Plight of Minorities in The Middle East Flavius Mihaies Jun 16, 2019·3 min read

St Mary al-Tahira, the main church in Qaraqosh, Iraq, shattered by the Islamic State. Nov 27, 2016 I Click on the image to see the 360 photo tour (Image credit Flavius Mihaies)

“Isis and other Islamic terrorists continuously slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship”

The President-elect’s statement following the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19, 2016 reflects what I saw in Iraq and Syria over the past five years.

From Sednaya, Syria to Qaraqosh, Iraq I visited communities devastated by the ISIS, the Islamic State, and other jihadist groups. The same must be said of other minorities, such as Yazidis and Kurds, whose survivors from ISIS’s violence I met.

Former President Obama is right. The majority of ISIS’s victims are fellow Sunni Muslims. But this is not the whole picture.

While numbers has shown that most victims are Sunni Muslims, it is Christians and other minorities that are at risk of disappearing entirely, given how tiny their communities are in Iraq. On March 17, Secretary of State John F. Kerry issued a determination of genocide against ISIS, naming Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims as victims of the group.

The Christian population of Iraq decreased from 1.4 million before the war in 2003 to 250,000, and according to some counts as low as 200,000. The experience of Yazidis has been even more harrowing. Their genocide led to the abduction and enslaving of at least 7000 Yazidi women and massacres of at least 5,000 Yazidi civilians, according to the United Nations.

Take Qaraqosh — Iraq’s largest Christian-majority town, which I visited last month. ISIS seized control of the town in August 2014, following the fall of Mosul, 20 miles west. The Sunni jihadi group specifically targeted Christians and their places of worship. Forces securing the town after its liberation by the Iraqi Army, supported by local Assyrian Christian fighters last October told me that Qaraqosh’s ten churches were burned, destroyed or desecrated — the main one, St Mary al-Tahira, used as a shooting range (see image above and 360 photo tour here and below), while the jihadists left the only mosque untouched.

At the time of my visit, the town was already liberated for a month, but the air was still heavy with dust and other residues from the fighting and destructions. I doubt that Qaraqosh displaced inhabitants will be able to return anytime soon.

Most of the 50,000 Assyrians Christians living in Qaraqosh fled town when ISIS took control. Many are eager to return, but shattered infrastructures, lack of security, uncertainty about the future of Iraq and ethnic and religious tensions are keeping most in the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan, KRG.

Similar to what I witnessed in Syria, the fighting has sown distrust between Christians and Muslims. Some of the Assyrians I met were wary of living alongside their Muslim neighbors again, raising concerns that some had opportunistically or ideologically sided with the invading Islamic State.

Assyrian Christians from Iraq trace their presence thousand years prior to Christianity’s founding, and they preserve ancient customs including the Assyrian language, which Christian villages and towns in the Nineveh Plain still consider their mother tongues. If Assyrians were to disappear, the loss for Iraq will go beyond the immediate loss of life to the identity of the country. Iraq will no longer be seen as a culturally diverse society, home to ancient religions and rich cultures.

Earlier this month, President Obama signed the International Religious Freedom Act, which will make combatting persecution a more significant part of US foreign policy. How his successor in the White House will enforce it could determine the fate of Iraq and Syria’s Christians and other minorities.