The government of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell overnight to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, also called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mosul’s panic-stricken Christians, along with many others, are now fleeing en masse to the rural Nineveh Plain, according to the Vatican publication Fides. The border crossings into Kurdistan, too, are jammed with the cars of the estimated 150,000 desperate escapees.
The population, particularly its Christian community, has much to fear. The ruthlessness of ISIS, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, has been legendary. Its beheadings, crucifixions, and other atrocities against Christians and everyone else who fails to conform to its vision of a caliphate have been on full display earlier this year, in Syria.
As Corner readers will remember, in February, it was the militants of this rebel group that, in the northern Syrian state of Raqqa, compelled Christian leaders to sign a 7th-century dhimmi contract. The document sets forth specific terms denying the Christians the basic civil rights of equality and religious freedom and committing them to pay protection money in exchange for their lives and the ability to keep their Christian identity.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/38 ... -nina-shea
Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
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planosteve
- Posts: 22900
- Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 8:04 pm
Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
"Nice little Jewish community you got here"-Arab world to Nut Job 
Re: Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
It's time to carpet bomb.
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planosteve
- Posts: 22900
- Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 8:04 pm
Re: Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
The ISIS with about 900 fighters took Mosel, a city of over 1 million without firing a shot. The 30,000 US trained and equiped Iraq military fled leaving all of their equipment to be captured including blackhawk helicoptors.
"Nice little Jewish community you got here"-Arab world to Nut Job
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Bob Of Burleson
- Posts: 1803
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Re: Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
planosteve wrote:The ISIS with about 900 fighters took Mosel, a city of over 1 million without firing a shot. The 30,000 US trained and equiped Iraq military fled leaving all of their equipment to be captured including blackhawk helicoptors.
Mosul's population is closer to 2 million than 1 million, and most of them are Sunni. So the government troops, most of whom were Shiites, were really fleeing the ISIS Sunni rebels and over a million of their civilian brothers.
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Bob Of Burleson
- Posts: 1803
- Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 10:59 am
Re: Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
ISIS, with gains in Iraq, closes in
on founder Zarqawi’s violent vision
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a 36-year-old Jordanian who called himself “the Stranger” slipped into the suburbs of Baghdad armed with a few weapons, bags of cash and an audacious plan for starting a war he hoped would unite Sunni Muslims across the Middle East.
The tattooed ex-convict and high school dropout had few followers and scant ties to the local population. Yet, the Stranger — soon to be known widely as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — quickly rallied thousands of Iraqis and foreign fighters to his cause. He launched spectacular suicide bombings and gruesome executions targeting Americans, Shiites and others he saw as obstacles to his vision for a Sunni caliphate stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf.
Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006, but the organization he founded is again on the march. In just a week, his group — formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq and now called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — has seized cities and towns across western and northern Iraq at a pace that might have astonished Zarqawi himself. Already in control of large swaths of eastern Syria, the group’s black-clad warriors appear to have taken a leap toward realizing Zarqawi’s dream of an extremist Sunni enclave across the region.
It is unclear whether ISIS’s gains will last or whether the Sunni tribesmen who apparently aided the jihadists will submit to living under the group’s harsh brand of Islamic law. Either way, U.S. and Middle East officials say the group’s achievements are both remarkable and alarming, displaying the same mix of audacity, cunning and political skill that made Zarqawi such a fearsome opponent a decade ago.
Counterterrorism officials who tried to defeat the group during the Zarqawi era expressed begrudging respect for ISIS’s ability to recover from virtual extinction in the years after his death. The current leader, a former Iraqi teacher known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, managed to find new purpose in the Syrian conflict and renewed strength in the lawless regions of eastern Syria and western Iraq, where his fighters could train and plan without interference from U.S. and other Western military forces.
“They get sick, but they never die,” said a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official who has closely tracked the fast-moving developments in Iraq.
The official, who insisted that his name and nationality not be revealed in discussing his country’s intelligence assessments, said ISIS’s astonishing recent gains were mostly due to skillfully forged alliances with Sunni tribal leaders, with the group exploiting widespread resentment toward the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
MORE
on founder Zarqawi’s violent vision
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a 36-year-old Jordanian who called himself “the Stranger” slipped into the suburbs of Baghdad armed with a few weapons, bags of cash and an audacious plan for starting a war he hoped would unite Sunni Muslims across the Middle East.
The tattooed ex-convict and high school dropout had few followers and scant ties to the local population. Yet, the Stranger — soon to be known widely as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — quickly rallied thousands of Iraqis and foreign fighters to his cause. He launched spectacular suicide bombings and gruesome executions targeting Americans, Shiites and others he saw as obstacles to his vision for a Sunni caliphate stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf.
Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006, but the organization he founded is again on the march. In just a week, his group — formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq and now called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — has seized cities and towns across western and northern Iraq at a pace that might have astonished Zarqawi himself. Already in control of large swaths of eastern Syria, the group’s black-clad warriors appear to have taken a leap toward realizing Zarqawi’s dream of an extremist Sunni enclave across the region.
It is unclear whether ISIS’s gains will last or whether the Sunni tribesmen who apparently aided the jihadists will submit to living under the group’s harsh brand of Islamic law. Either way, U.S. and Middle East officials say the group’s achievements are both remarkable and alarming, displaying the same mix of audacity, cunning and political skill that made Zarqawi such a fearsome opponent a decade ago.
Counterterrorism officials who tried to defeat the group during the Zarqawi era expressed begrudging respect for ISIS’s ability to recover from virtual extinction in the years after his death. The current leader, a former Iraqi teacher known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, managed to find new purpose in the Syrian conflict and renewed strength in the lawless regions of eastern Syria and western Iraq, where his fighters could train and plan without interference from U.S. and other Western military forces.
“They get sick, but they never die,” said a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official who has closely tracked the fast-moving developments in Iraq.
The official, who insisted that his name and nationality not be revealed in discussing his country’s intelligence assessments, said ISIS’s astonishing recent gains were mostly due to skillfully forged alliances with Sunni tribal leaders, with the group exploiting widespread resentment toward the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
MORE
Re: Christians Flee Iraq after 2,000 years!
Oh well. At least we got to enjoy that cheap oil for awhile.
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