OPINION:
Will the hundreds of thousands of Christians who have fled Syria and Iraq during the last two years ever spend another Christmas at home? Will the religious minorities such as the Yazidis be able to reclaim the homelands where they have lived for thousands of years?
Since the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar was recovered in a hard-fought campaign concluding on Nov. 13, and with the Iraqi army gradually reclaiming the ISIS-occupied city of Ramadi, the next challenge for the coalition fighting ISIS will be to dislodge ISIS fighters from Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.
Since Dec. 13 there have been pitched battles between ISIS forces testing Kurdish defenses on the western and eastern perimeter of Mosul, with ISIS losing 70 fighters, according to Kurdish media.
To the east of Mosul are the sprawling wheat-growing lands of the Nineveh Plain, the homeland of the Assyrian Christians. An estimated 150,000 Iraq Christians fled from the plain to Kurdistan 18 months ago when columns of ISIS attack vehicles rolled into the area. Hundreds of thousands of others are refugees in surrounding countries.
Despite the challenges, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and Iraq observers see the commonsensical solution for displaced minorities is to create a secure semi-autonomous zone for them around Mosul.
So says Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska Republican: “Beyond talk, one realistic solution is to create a safe haven in the Nineveh Plain, the ancestral home of many religious minorities. The international community, working with Baghdad and Irbil, could secure a protective zone for these peoples to remain in and return to their homelands.”
“ISIS is not 10 feet tall,” says Rep. Mike Pompeo, Kansas Republican, a former armored cavalry tank platoon commander and who serves on the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Pompeo says a U.S. military campaign by a division such as the U.S. First Infantry could recapture Mosul in a matter of weeks, but the problem is that neither Kurdish forces nor does the Shia-dominated Iraqi Army see Mosul as their priority.
On the other hand there are signs that forces are building to take Mosul back. Peshmerga and a small contingent of the Turkish military have been training hundreds of militia recruits at its base near Mosul of Bashike, which ISIS attacked on Dec. 16. Since the summer, as many as 7,000 Sunni and Christian men have signed up to fight ISIS, according to Investors Business Daily in the U.K.eanwhile, Kurdish Peshmerga have trained and equipped 3,200 Assyrian Christian militia to support a military campaign.
The longer ISIS stays in Mosul the more time it has to harden its defenses and to improve its administrative infrastructure and its brutal culture. Meanwhile, 1.8 million refugees and displaced persons are sheltering in neighboring Kurdistan with winter settling in and humanitarian aid running short, according to Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Kurdistan Regional Government Representative in Washington. “We have seen a 30 percent increase in population in a short period of time, so that means all of our services are stretched, be it healthcare, electricity or refuse collection, and the food basket is diminishing,” she told The Washington Times Dec 1.
“Some people, seeing the food basket getting smaller and the continuing fighting in Iraq and Syria, decide to take their chances by going to Europe.”
“The problem is ISIS outguns us,” KRG’s Abdul Rahman says. “They have long-range weapons, armored vehicles they have captured from the Iraqi Army. To defeat them the Peshmerga would have to de-mine the area, and would need long- range artillery, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) removal technology and equipment such as night-vision goggles,” she says but adds: “We are very thankful to the United States for standing by us, which has allowed us to liberate almost all of Kurdistan. Without that we could not have done it.”
“The KRG supports refugees and IDPs and wants them to return to their homes in liberated villages, but they need protection. Currently, it is unclear who would provide that protection,” Abdul Rahman says “Until that is talked about by all parties, the idea of creating a safe zone is putting the cart before the horse” says Ms. Rahman, who welcomed U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to Irbil last week.
Nonetheless, the prospects of Christians reclaiming their homeland and repopulating it over time are better than those for Jewish settlers who began to settle in Ottoman-administered Jerusalem a century ago. The Jews succeeded against all odds, and perhaps faith and resolve had something to do with it. There is a story in the Old Testament about the 10 faithless spies and the two spies who reported to Moses that the Hebrews could conquer the Jordan valley. In warfare as in football, resolve seems to be a force multiplier.
• Douglas Burton, a Washington based independent writer, is a former associate editor for Insight on the News and served in Iraq with the U.S. Department of State from 2005-2007.
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