“Three Kalashnikovs towards my head,” mentioned Samir, an Assyrian, former diamond and gold service provider, describing how al-Qaeda stole his enterprise in Baghdad in 2010. “They took every thing, all of the gold, silver, jewels, every thing. Solely my life and my garments survived.”
He went on to say, “They did this to each different service provider on the road, about eight of them.” Like a whole lot of 1000’s of different ethnic and spiritual minorities, Samir gathered his household and fled to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Al-Qaeda first appeared in Iraq (AQI), based round 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the course of the Iraq Warfare. AQI later advanced into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) round 2006. ISI then turned ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) round 2013. In 2014, ISIS declared itself merely the “Islamic State” or “Caliphate.”
As ISIS rolled throughout the nation, they established their capital in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest metropolis. They terrorized Christians and different minorities alike. Underneath each AQI/ISI and later ISIS, Christians had been systematically focused, killed, kidnapped for ransom, pressured to pay jizya (a tax on non-Muslims), pressured to transform, or pushed to flee.
The Yazidis confronted genocide, most notably in the course of the 2014 Sinjar bloodbath. Shia Muslims had been closely focused and killed, whereas Turkmen, Shabak, and different minorities additionally confronted widespread violence. Even Sunni Muslims who refused to comply with ISIS’s extremist ideology had been executed.
The Iraqi authorities, army, and police had been particularly focused. In keeping with an help employee aiding at a camp for internally displaced folks, “Sooner or later, we had a whole SWAT workforce arrive from Mosul, with their households.”
After capturing Mosul in June 2014, ISIS superior quickly throughout the Nineveh Plains, seizing numerous cities in August of that 12 months, together with Sinjar (Shingal), the place they carried out genocide towards the Yazidis. The Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority with historical roots in Mesopotamia, had been thought of heretics and devil-worshippers by ISIS.
Not like Christians and Jews, who’re acknowledged as ‘folks of the e book’ below Islamic legislation and will theoretically pay a tax to outlive, ISIS afforded Yazidis no such choice, solely conversion, enslavement, or demise.
In Sinjar, ISIS surrounded Mount Sinjar, the Yazidi’s ancestral homeland, trapping tens of 1000’s of Yazidis. They systematically executed males and boys, enslaved and offered 1000’s of ladies and women, and killed an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 folks. The United Nations and several other nations formally acknowledged the bloodbath as genocide.
The assault on Sinjar occurred concurrently with ISIS’s push towards Christian cities comparable to Alqosh. Because the group swept throughout the Nineveh Plains, it seized Christian cities and villages together with Qaraqosh (Baghdeda), Iraq’s largest Christian city, in addition to Bartella, Karamlesh, Telkaif, and Batnaya. ISIS superior to inside 14 kilometers of Alqosh, one of many oldest repeatedly inhabited Christian cities on the planet and residential to the tomb of the Prophet Nahum.
Excessive on a stony cliff overlooking the city of Alqosh stands the Rabban Hormizd Monastery, based within the seventh century (round 640 A.D.) by Rabban Saint Hormizd, a monk of the Church of the East famend for his ascetic life and miracles. The monastery turned some of the necessary facilities of Christianity in Mesopotamia and later the non secular coronary heart of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Initially, the monastery belonged to the Church of the East, whose heritage was shared by all of the area’s Christians, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac alike.
Within the sixteenth century, a division arose inside the Church of the East when a part of it sought union with Rome, resulting in the formation of the Chaldean Catholic Church. By the 1830s, the Rabban Hormizd Monastery had change into the patriarchal seat of the Chaldean Church, and Alqosh advanced right into a predominantly Chaldean Catholic city.
For greater than a thousand years, the monastery and the encircling Assyrian group have withstood invasions and persecution, assaults by Persians, Ottomans, Kurdish raiders, native emirs comparable to Ismail Pasha of Amadiya, Saddam Hussein’s Baathists, and most just lately ISIS. When ISIS superior throughout northern Iraq, most different Christian cities had been deserted, and as a big historic and spiritual website, Alqosh and its monastery turned a major goal. But the lads of Alqosh refused to flee.
Athra, an Assyrian Catholic born in Alqosh, recalled how worry grew as reviews of ISIS massacres unfold and the entrance line drew nearer. He and different males despatched their households to security however selected to remain behind to defend their city. Sooner or later, they noticed the Kurdish Peshmerga forces abandon the checkpoint that protected Alqosh. Decided to not give up their properties, the townsmen organized themselves right into a Christian militia armed with AK-47s and took over the checkpoint.
Throughout the area, related Christian protection teams emerged, together with the Dwekh Nawsha, an Assyrian militia shaped particularly to guard Christian cities within the Nineveh Plains, and the Nineveh Plain Safety Items (NPU). Alqosh’s place on the base of Mount Alfaf supplied a powerful defensive benefit. The native militia held the road till the Peshmerga returned, and ISIS by no means managed to take Alqosh.
Whereas many Christians fled and by no means returned to their villages, the folks of Alqosh selected otherwise. In keeping with Athra, only a few days after the standoff with ISIS, as soon as they knew it was protected, many of the males introduced their households again.
“Nicely, it was not in the perfect state of affairs,” Athra recalled. “However on the identical time, it was not likely a battle zone. If not all, in all probability 90% of the folks of Alqosh who had stayed in Iraq returned dwelling.”
“After they got here again, inside one or two months, Assyrians from different cities that had been nonetheless below ISIS management started coming to Alqosh,” he continued. “They rented homes and stayed right here, so the city turned somewhat larger. In some methods, it was higher than earlier than as a result of the inhabitants elevated.”
He added, “And, by the way in which, between June 10 and August 7, when the plain was invaded by ISIS, even Arabs and Muslims from Mosul got here to take refuge in Alqosh. We sheltered them in colleges and different locations, and we tried to assist them as a lot as we might.”
As different components of the nation had been later liberated from ISIS, many individuals returned to their authentic cities or moved to the Kurdish capital of Erbil, the place they might discover bodily security and higher financial alternatives. Many others emigrated to america and elsewhere, however the folks of Alqosh stayed.
“I used to be born right here, and I’ll die right here,” mentioned Athra defiantly. He defined that it was necessary for him to stay as a result of “each nation has tradition, identification, ethnic identification, let’s say, which is a part of the world.”
Some cultures, he mentioned, have solely 500 to 1,000 years of historical past. “They’re pleased with their tradition, traditions, and ethnicity. Nicely, I’ve a convention of seven,000 years, the primary language, first tradition, first clothes, first agriculture, first structure, first every thing. The first Christianity was right here. In fact, there have been cultures earlier than the Assyrians or Mesopotamians, however the Assyrians are a tradition you’ll be able to nonetheless see at the moment.”
Athra felt that to maintain his tradition alive, he needed to stay in his homeland. “I may be Christian wherever I’m going, even on Mars. I can pray and comply with my Christian traditions, hook up with God by way of my religion. However I can’t be Assyrian in France or America or anyplace else. Naturally, I’d mix into the group there. If not me, then my great-grandson can be French or American.”
He concluded by stressing how very important it’s to protect his tradition, not just for himself and his folks, however for the world. “It’s the oldest tradition on the planet that also survives.”
