ICC Note: What will happen when ISIS is defeated in Iraq? Many Iraqi Christians fear the worse. While the plains of Nineveh are historically Christian homelands, the leaders of Iraq and the majority population disagrees. With the defeat of ISIS there must come reform to protect the Christian minority from future caliphates. Current indications point to this future as a fearful possibility for Christians. 

10/31/2016 Iraq (CRUX): There are indications that life for Christians in Iraq, including in liberated areas of Nineveh, will not be easy. Some see troubling signs that certain politicians in Iraq – and in neighboring regional power Turkey – will try to build their own empires or caliphates on the rubble of the one ISIS attempted.

After the liberation from ISIS of historically Christian towns in the Nineveh region of Iraq last week, Patriarch Luis Raphael Sako of the Chaldean Catholic Church visited several of the newly-freed areas.

“These are our lands, Christian lands and villages,” Patriach Sako, the Baghdad-based spiritual leader of many of Iraq’s Christians said. He added that Christians would soon return to their ancestral lands, according to AsiaNews.

History supports the patriarch’s claim. The Nineveh region of Iraq – near Mosul – is one of the oldest Christian homelands in the world, but the next steps will be important.

“There needs to be a strategy for reconciliation and reform in the entire Nineveh Province in order to obtain a sustainable solution,” Mona Malik of the Assyrian Aid Society told Crux.

“It’s imperative that the region is not pressured to return to the pre-ISIS conditions that allowed the assault in the first place and without any resistance,” she said.

Sadly, there are indications that life for Christians in Iraq, including in Nineveh, will not be easy going forward. Some see troubling signs that certain politicians in Iraq – and in neighboring regional power Turkey – will try to build their own empires or caliphates on the rubble of the one ISIS tried to build.

Speaking in early October to Gulf-based Rotana Television, Turkish President Racep Tayyip Erdogan said that after ISIS is removed from

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