The Christian flight has broader implications for the Middle East. “If one of the most important religious groups in the world continues to be forced out of the Middle East, this bodes negatively for pluralism, tolerance, and the ability of the region’s people to live interlinked with the rest of the world,” the Center for American Progress reported. The status of Christians “is a barometer of whether those of other faiths or no faith at all will be able to live and thrive in the future Middle East.”
In Erbil, fifteen hundred Christian families displaced by isis now live in shipping containers converted into temporary homes in Ashti-2, a teeming camp with narrow dirt roads. Outside the camp, I met Salam Ablaha, a thirty-six-year-old grocer. An Assyrian Christian, he fled Hamdaniya, near Mosul, in August, 2014. He now runs an open-air stall that sells green apples, tomatoes, mushrooms, lemons, and carrots stacked high on crates. He had a light beard and was wearing a black fleece jacket to ward off the spring chill. His extended family of twenty-six—his wife, three children, parents, and the families of seven brothers—live off the charity from the Iraqi Assyrian Church and his modest earnings.
Like many Christians I interviewed, Ablaha has no intention of returning to Hamdaniya. Since the city was liberated, last October, he’s been back once to check on his home. The furniture was gone; so were the windows and doors.
“None of us want to go back,” he told me. “We’re still scared of what will happen after isis.” There’s a widespread fear among Christians about the emergence of a third iteration of Islamic extremism—after the rise of an Al Qaeda affiliate, a decade ago, and isis, during the past three years. Ablaha’s brother was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in 2007; he was freed only after the family paid a hefty ransom.
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