By World
“Ninety-nine percent of the Christians have left Mosul,” pastor
Haitham Jazrawi said today following the takeover of Iraq’s second
largest city—and its ancient Christian homeland—by al-Qaeda-linked
jihadist militants.
A mass exodus of Christians and Muslims is
underway from the city of 1.8 million after hundreds of gunmen with the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) overran the city and forced
out the Iraqi army and the police. Reports indicate Iraqi army units
abandoned their posts, in the process giving up U.S.-provided weapons
and vehicles, including Humvees, in what was a key base of operations
for U.S. military forces throughout the Iraq war. Long a city of diverse
religious and ethnic makeup—with Arabs and Kurds, and a large
population of Assyrian Christians—Mosul was a flashpoint during the
eight-year conflict.
More than 150,000 residents fled the city today, the BBC reports,
and photos on Twitter and elsewhere showed massive traffic jams on
roads leading into the desert.
Iraq’s parliament declared a state of emergency, even asking
Iraqi civilians to take up arms against the fighters, but the government
of President Nouri al-Maliki seemed impotent to drive back the
militants, who have already taken over areas near Baghdad and make up a
potent force fighting the government in neighboring Syria.
Locals say ISIL gunmen began arriving in Mosul on Friday, killing
21 policemen along with others, and eventually capturing the airport,
along with military helicopters and vehicles. At the University of
Mosul, according to local media reports, the insurgents took 70 female
students hostage. By Monday, thousands of Christians fled Mosul to
nearby enclaves and to cities under the Kurdish Regional Government’s
control.
A representative for U.S.-based watchdog Open Doors in Iraq
reported that 200 families found shelter at Mar Matti, the
fourth-century hillside monastery about 10 miles from Mosul, while about
50 families have taken refuge in a monastery in Alqosh, the ancient
home of Nahum the prophet. Surrounding Mosul is Nineveh Plains, an area
of scattered Christian villages, and several schools there became
sanctuaries for the fleeing Christian families.
“If this continues, Mosul soon will be emptied of Christians,”
said a spokesman for Open Doors, not named for security reasons. “This
could be the last migration of Christians from Mosul.”
Already Iraq’s Christian population, once one of the oldest in
the world, has been decimated since the 2003 U.S. invasion—cut by most
estimates to less than half its size a decade ago. But recent focus has
been on the churches in Baghdad, where violence has skyrocketed this year, compared to northern areas like Mosul.
While the Maliki government has struggled to recompose itself
following April elections that gave the Shiite president a third term,
ISIL has been on the move—taking control of Fallujah in January and
moving into Ramadi, only 80 miles from the capital, in March. The
resurgent terrorists, once known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, want to overthrow
the Iraqi and Syrian governments to establish a Sunni Muslim caliphate
in the Middle East.
“Christian families are terrified”, one Iraqi told World Watch
Monitor. A Christian man in Mosul reached by phone said, “I was able to
make my wife and children leave Mosul, but now I am stuck in the house
and can’t move.”
As Iraqi forces scramble to respond, reports are emerging of ISIL
fighters moving south toward Kirkuk and the country’s strategic
oilfields. That’s where Jazrawi pastors one of the country’s oldest
evangelical churches. “No one knows what will happen to us in the next
days,” he told me today by email. “Pray for us. We still believe that
our Lord wants us to stay in Iraq.”
