ISIS and Iraq – Now this is persecution!

A story that had some traction last week but has since been buried under news from Israel and other places around the world was the fate of the Christian communities in Mosul, Iraq.

Last week, ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), which I will talk about more below, occupied Mosul and the surrounding communities. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq and is home to one of the oldest continuous Christian settlements in the Middle East. Near the city are the ruins of Nineveh. Since occupation, ISIS has destroyed the shrine to Jonah (who is also a prophet in Islam), burned Christian churches, and burned another sight that is believed to contain the tomb of the Biblical prophet Seth.

There had also been preliminary plans to make Mosul the center of a region that would be a semi-autonomous area within Iraq, though not much progress had been made since the new government of Iraq came to power. Needless to say, this has been a devastating blow to the region and to its heritage. Beyond this damage, there has been a great impact to the people. Many people have died in the fighting, and there have been very specific consequences for the Christian population.

As ISIS took hold of these areas, they marked the homes of Christians with the Arabic letter “Nun” which stands for Nazarenes, a word used to describe Christians. They then gave the Christians three options:

1.     Convert to Islam

2.     Pay a yearly tax, called the jizya, and submit to various other restrictions

3.     Die

In response to this, those that were able fled the area, with hundreds of thousands leaving for Kurdistan or Turkey to the north. It is believed that around 15 families that were unable to flee (because of illness) converted to Islam, and thankfully there have been very accounts of killings as a result of this decree (not to be confused with the massive amount of death from the fighting, I’m speaking specifically about killings based on these decrees).

Now this is persecution! This is what Christians around the world potentially face on a daily basis. Persecution is not what Christians complain about in the United States, which protects religious freedom for all. Persecution is having to make the decision between conversion, losing all property, or dying. We should be thankful that there were areas that the people could flee to, but we must remember that they have now lost everything. And we must remember that this type of persecution is not going anywhere in that region of the world.

So how did we get here? I am going to deviate a little bit from a Christian centric view and get into some of the policy decisions that lead to this place, and try to present a little bit of understanding of the greater Middle East.

ISIS is a Sunni militia group. Sunni is one of the two main strains of Islam along with the Shia. The Sunni are best represented by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the rebels fighting Assad in Syria, the middle area of Iraq. It is also al Qaeda, and it was the religion of Saddam Hussein. It is by far the larger of the two groups, making up about 85% of Muslims in the Middle East.

Shia Muslims are best thought of as Assad in Syria, PLO, the larger (Southern) group in Iraq, and Iran. Needless to say this two branches of Islam are not exactly friendly and have been fighting the proxy wars we have been thinking of the past several decades, but in reality have been at war since the split in the late 600s. At various times there have been unification under empires and strong chieftains, but there has never been a true peace between the two groups.

An analogy I like to think of, because of my bent towards European History, is the split between the Catholics and Protestants in the 15^th-17^th centuries. While there were obvious religious differences, the religions were used more as a proxy to determine what bloc a region would be in, and there was constant fighting, with smaller regions serving as a proxy for the larger powers, most notably The Thirty Years War. It is not a perfect analogy by any sense, but I do like to think of the two blocs fighting each other in proxy conflicts

A big source of the current conflict can be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the drawing of new maps after World War I. This video provides a quick primer:

http://slate.me/1nHJjpE

Iraq, specifically, was a classic example of what Britain did to maintain power in the region. Instead of keeping the different regions separate (ie a Sunni region and a Shia region as the Ottoman Empire had done), they combined them into a single region and gave power to the lesser population. In the case of Iraq, it is about 60% Shia, 20% Sunni, 20% Kurds. The British gave power to the Sunnis, who maintained rule with an iron fist of murder and intimidation – methods that were passed down to Saddam Hussein.

Before the Second Gulf War, we were bombarded with stories of the atrocities committed by Saddam against his people. These were undoubtedly true, as this was the traditional way that the Sunnis kept power within the country even though they only accounted for about 20% of the population. The upshot was that there was more or less internal stability in the country, but there were generations of people ready to get revenge when the opportunity presented itself.

Enter the US and the Coalition of the Willing. Once our forces overthrew Saddam it unleashed the hell that had been bottled up for said generations. Our soldiers would get caught in the middle of it, but more accurately it would be right to think of the years immediately following the invasion as a time to settle scores and to ethnically cleanse the areas that had become somewhat mixed.

Without going into too much more detail, what followed was elections that brought in a Shia leader with hopes of bringing in other members into government from the Sunni and Kurds. This did not happen, as the Shia leader, Maliki, used his power to render the Sunni members of government impotent and to do some ethnic cleansing of his own. This was eventually met with response from ISIS, who invaded Iraq from the fighting they were doing in Syria and quickly drove back the pro-government forces from the Sunni lands in Iraq. Government soldiers, who were primarily Shia, were not willing to fight to hold Sunni lands for their government, but they did stiffen resistance as they entered Shia lands (with the help of some Shia militias as well).

So that is more or less the standoff now. As the government forces of Iraq abandoned the Sunni areas, this included Mosul, which opened up the power vacuum that was filled by ISIS, an especially barbaric strain of Sunni Islam, leading to the persecution of all who were not Sunni Muslims. There is some hope that ISIS has pushed too far, and there is now some pushback from the Sunni civilians, but what happens from there is anyone’s guess. Here is another article on that possibility:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/07/24/is_isis_showing_signs_of_strain.html

I think overall this was inevitable. ISIS would be strong until they approached Shia lands, and once they were responsible for actually caring for people in their territory, there would be pushback. Unfortunately it appears it will be too late to make much difference for the Christians that were in Mosul.

So where does this leave us? As mentioned above, many of the refugees were able to flee into Kurdistan and Turkey and find sanctuary. These are strong regions and they will be safe and hopefully able to rebuild the lives of those that fled. Perhaps, when ISIS is eventually ousted and a more moderate (to use it somewhat loosely) group takes control of the Sunni region of Iraq, they will be able to return home.

So what is the US responsibility in all of this? That is a good question. I think it has been clear that since the initial invasion in 2003 that many of these concerns were not strongly considered when the decision to take Saddam out was made. There should be no tears for Saddam being gone, but the idea that a democracy could be planted and the US could get out quickly was a fantasy. The choice was between a long term occupation (50 or so years), or a descent into chaos. Neither of those options are all that appealing, and we chose the latter, with the consequences being a huge power vacuum, lots of violence, and innocent people such as the Christian community of Mosul being caught in the crossfire. I’m not sure that, even with all of this, it would ever make sense to send US soldiers back in.

In my mind, the only hope for some long term peace is going to be a re-drawing of the map in this region, with countries that better represent the people within. This will be the final response to the decision of the British a century ago, with much blood shed, and so much that is lost forever.

POSTSCRIPT: All this, and I mentioned barely anything about Syria and nothing about Libya and Israel, where these types of fights are still being waged, and probably will be for years and decades going forward.