ICC Note: As the fight to retake Mosul is on its way in Iraq, Christians wait anxiously to see if they might be able to return home after two years. News of the recapture of Qaraqosh sparked widespread celebrations among the Christians living in Erbil. Qaraqosh fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014 displacing approximately 120,000 Christian villagers.

10/20/2016 Iraq (Daily Star): Iraq’s Christian community is one of the oldest in the world and the loss of what was once its largest town, Qaraqosh, to Daesh (ISIS) two years ago was a major blow. News that the town was poised to be recaptured from the militants sparked jubilation among Christians who had fled, with many dancing and singing in the city of Irbil.

Christians once formed a significant minority of Iraq’s mainly Muslim population but mounting sectarian attacks against them since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 have sent their numbers plummeting.

In June 2014, militants led by Daesh seized control of Mosul and ordered the northern city’s Christian community to convert to Islam, pay a special tax, leave or face execution.

Weeks later, the militants swept through Qaraqosh and the rest of the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul, where an estimated 120,000 Christians lived, forcing all of them to leave their homes.

More than two years later, Iraqi forces are reconquering those areas as they mount a much-delayed operation to retake Mosul, now the only major urban hub in Daesh’s shrinking “caliphate.”

Here are some facts about Christians in Iraq:

The Christian population includes Chaldean, Assyrian, Armenian and Syriac communities, but it is a shadow of what it used to be – once numbering more than a million nationwide, with upward of 600,000 in Baghdad alone, there are now fewer than 350,000 in the country.

Before 2003, Christians living in Iraq’s second city of Mosul numbered 60,000, but that had dropped to a few thousand in 2014. They all left a few days after Daesh occupied the city.

…

[Full Story]