When the Islamic State group pushed into northern Iraq in the early summer of 2014, it swept up in its path many of the religious and ethnic minority communities that have for centuries called that region home. The Nineveh Plains — a region home to Turkmen, Shabaks, Yazidis, and Iraq's ancient Assyrian Christian community — has been the target of not only military occupation, but also complete cultural and historical annihilation. And while many of these minorities have opted to flee, there are those who are staying behind to make a stand. The Christian Science Monitor's Kristen Chick reports from Baqufa:
"Christians have taken up arms because they want to protect their own land, and many no longer trust the Kurds to do it for them. Even as thousands of Christians are fleeing Iraq, convinced they can no longer find safety, or a future, in their homeland, these men are hoping to preserve a future for them, even if they're not sure they'll succeed.
"‘After 15 years, you'll come back here and you won't find any Christians,' says Marcus, a young Dwekh Nawsha fighter who gave only his first name.
[…]
"Assyrian Christians have formed at least four armed groups to fight IS, with three operating in this area north of Mosul. Dwekh Nawsha is the smallest. … They protect the village of Baqufa, which was retaken from IS last year, but their fighters also join [Kurdish] peshmerga at the front line, a little more than half a mile away."
Iraq's minority Christians existed in a kind of grey area long before ISIS began seizing their cities and villages. And if the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis can all slice off their own sliver of Mesopotamia, why then, ask Assyrians near and far, can't Christians?
"This is it. They either re-establish themselves in [their] own villages, or get blown around the globe and horse-traded," said Jeff Gardner, spokesperson for Restore Nineveh Now (RNN), an organization founded by Assyrian Christians in the United States.
Christian militias have been sprouting up across Syria and Iraq for more than a year now, and many of them, much like RNN's Nineveh Plain Protection Units — who have refused to fight under peshmerga command, and have thus been forbidden by the Kurdish military force from joining combat — are supported and financed by members of the Assyrian diaspora.
Although these militias are made up primarily of native Syrians and Iraqis, foreign volunteers — including several American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — have also signed up to join the fight. And while their experience and expertise has been embraced by commanders on the ground, some view these irregulars as a potential liability in a war that already has a very sectarian makeup.
The relationship between these Christian militias and Kurdish peshmerga forces is another sticking point. Some work with and even fight alongside the Kurds, while others do not. Assyrian diaspora groups have accused the Kurdistan Regional Government of running an apartheid-like system in Christian communities, and blame the peshmerga for the fall of Qaraqosh, a once-vibrant Christian city now under ISIS's control.
"Christian villages were inhabited by peshmerga, [and] inhabitants were told to hand in their guns," claims Gardner, whose Restore Nineveh Now foundation advocates for a protected, semi-autonomous territory in northwestern Iraq for the region's religious and ethnic minorities.
An Iraq comprised of sectarian outposts and enclaves poses its own bevy of challenges, however, and some have called such suggestions unfeasible and divisive.
"What happened was that some European and American parties — as part of their strategies to defend Iraqi Christians — demanded, through statements or press releases, that Iraqi Christians be given an autonomous region," said Iraqi parliamentarian, and Assyrian Christian, Yonadam Kanna in a recent interview with Al-Monitor. "In other words, those who made such demands are people outside of Iraq, while we — who work hard in parliament — espouse the principles prescribed in Iraq's constitution and proclaim the importance of living as part of a single homeland that unites Iraqis of all ilk."
However, if nature abhors a vacuum, it likewise offers little advice on how to properly fill it. As swaths of Iraq and Syria continue to unravel, people there will continue to revert to lines drawn long before the French, British, and Americans ever set foot in the region. The transition will be one full of uncertainty, and very likely violent.
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http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/11/11/onward_christian_soldiers_syria_iraq_militias.html