ICC Note: Discrimination in Iraq started long before ISIS emerged. While ISIS is the most brutal and barbaric of persecutors, Iraqi minorities are unsure of their country’s future. Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and other minorities want to be sure that their future in Iraq is safe from such genocide as they have experienced in the past two years. Will minorities survive ISIS? Will they survive Iraq after ISIS?

12/17/2016 Iraq (CNN): In the offices of a Kurdish government ministry created to promote ethnic and religious harmony, a Jewish man — one of the last in Iraq — reflects on his nation’s past of persecution and a future darkened by ISIS.

“Iraq,” says Sherzhad Memsani, “is a graveyard for ethnic and religious minorities. We never expected another Holocaust would happen. But it did.”

ISIS killed and tortured Iraqis who did not subscribe to their extreme brand of Islam. Thousands of others fled their homes to escape the militant group’s brutality. Now, some of Iraq’s religious and ethnic minority communities teeter on extinction.

Hopes for a more tolerant future blossomed as Iraqi forces launched an offensive October 17 to oust ISIS from Nineveh province and Mosul, the city the Sunni militants made the seat of their caliphate. The military campaign was touted as a pivotal moment for a nation that has been suffering from sectarian strife since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

What would happen once the self-proclaimed Islamic State no longer controlled large swaths of Iraqi territory? Could Baghdad’s Shia-dominated government, accused by many of stoking religious and ethnic differences, lead the way forward to peace? Or would Iraq erupt in an outright civil war leading, perhaps, to a nation splintered?

As the war to oust ISIS unfolds on the streets of Mosul, Iraq’s immediate future hangs in the balance. Precarious. Delicate. Unsure.

The people from Mosul and Nineveh province, as well as those of Kurdish origin in Irbil, represent many of Iraq’s minorities. They long for a united land, though many remain skeptical peace can take hold. Others live in fear that decades of strife may have rendered them invisible forever.

…

[Full Story]