“Three Kalashnikovs against my head,” said Samir, an Assyrian, former diamond and gold merchant, describing how al-Qaeda stole his business in Baghdad in 2010. “They took everything, all the gold, silver, jewels, everything. Only my life and my clothes survived.”
He went on to say, “They did this to every other merchant on the street, about eight of them.” Like hundreds of thousands of other ethnic and religious minorities, Samir gathered his family and fled to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Al-Qaeda first appeared in Iraq (AQI), founded around 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during the Iraq War. AQI later evolved into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) around 2006. ISI then became ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) around 2013. In 2014, ISIS declared itself simply the “Islamic State” or “Caliphate.”
As ISIS rolled across the country, they established their capital in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. They terrorized Christians and other minorities alike. Under both AQI/ISI and later ISIS, Christians were systematically targeted, killed, kidnapped for ransom, forced to pay jizya (a tax on non-Muslims), forced to convert, or driven to flee.
The Yazidis faced genocide, most notably during the 2014 Sinjar massacre. Shia Muslims were heavily targeted and killed, while Turkmen, Shabak, and other minorities also faced widespread violence. Even Sunni Muslims who refused to follow ISIS’s extremist ideology were executed.
The Iraqi government, military, and police were especially targeted. According to an aid worker assisting at a camp for internally displaced people, “One day, we had an entire SWAT team arrive from Mosul, with their families.”
After capturing Mosul in June 2014, ISIS advanced rapidly across the Nineveh Plains, seizing a number of towns in August of that year, including Sinjar (Shingal), where they carried out genocide against the Yazidis. The Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority with ancient roots in Mesopotamia, were considered heretics and devil-worshippers by ISIS.
Unlike Christians and Jews, who are recognized as ‘people of the book’ under Islamic law and could theoretically pay a tax to survive, ISIS afforded Yazidis no such option, only conversion, enslavement, or death.
In Sinjar, ISIS surrounded Mount Sinjar, the Yazidi’s ancestral homeland, trapping tens of thousands of Yazidis. They systematically executed men and boys, enslaved and sold thousands of women and girls, and killed an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people. The United Nations and several countries officially recognized the massacre as genocide.
The assault on Sinjar occurred simultaneously with ISIS’s push toward Christian towns such as Alqosh. As the group swept across the Nineveh Plains, it seized Christian towns and villages including Qaraqosh (Baghdeda), Iraq’s largest Christian town, as well as Bartella, Karamlesh, Telkaif, and Batnaya. ISIS advanced to within 14 kilometers of Alqosh, one of the oldest continuously inhabited Christian towns in the world and home to the tomb of the Prophet Nahum.
High on a stony cliff overlooking the town of Alqosh stands the Rabban Hormizd Monastery, founded in the 7th century (around 640 A.D.) by Rabban Saint Hormizd, a monk of the Church of the East renowned for his ascetic life and miracles. The monastery became one of the most important centers of Christianity in Mesopotamia and later the spiritual heart of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Originally, the monastery belonged to the Church of the East, whose heritage was shared by all the region’s Christians, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac alike.
In the 16th century, a division arose within the Church of the East when part of it sought union with Rome, leading to the formation of the Chaldean Catholic Church. By the 1830s, the Rabban Hormizd Monastery had become the patriarchal seat of the Chaldean Church, and Alqosh evolved into a predominantly Chaldean Catholic town.
For more than a thousand years, the monastery and the surrounding Assyrian community have withstood invasions and persecution, attacks by Persians, Ottomans, Kurdish raiders, local emirs such as Ismail Pasha of Amadiya, Saddam Hussein’s Baathists, and most recently ISIS. When ISIS advanced across northern Iraq, most other Christian towns were abandoned, and as a significant historical and religious site, Alqosh and its monastery became a primary target. Yet the men of Alqosh refused to flee.
Athra, an Assyrian Catholic born in Alqosh, recalled how fear grew as reports of ISIS massacres spread and the front line drew closer. He and other men sent their families to safety but chose to stay behind to defend their town. One day, they saw the Kurdish Peshmerga forces abandon the checkpoint that protected Alqosh. Determined not to surrender their homes, the townsmen organized themselves into a Christian militia armed with AK-47s and took over the checkpoint.
Across the region, similar Christian defense groups emerged, including the Dwekh Nawsha, an Assyrian militia formed specifically to protect Christian towns in the Nineveh Plains, and the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU). Alqosh’s position at the base of Mount Alfaf provided a strong defensive advantage. The local militia held the line until the Peshmerga returned, and ISIS never managed to take Alqosh.
While many Christians fled and never returned to their villages, the people of Alqosh chose differently. According to Athra, just a few days after the standoff with ISIS, once they knew it was safe, most of the men brought their families back.
“Well, it was not in the best situation,” Athra recalled. “But at the same time, it was not really a war zone. If not all, probably 90% of the people of Alqosh who had stayed in Iraq returned home.”
“After they came back, within one or two months, Assyrians from other towns that were still under ISIS control began coming to Alqosh,” he continued. “They rented houses and stayed here, so the town became a little bigger. In some ways, it was better than before because the population increased.”
He added, “And, by the way, between June 10 and August 7, when the plain was invaded by ISIS, even Arabs and Muslims from Mosul came to take refuge in Alqosh. We sheltered them in schools and other places, and we tried to help them as much as we could.”
As other parts of the country were later liberated from ISIS, many people returned to their original towns or moved to the Kurdish capital of Erbil, where they could find physical safety and better economic opportunities. Many others emigrated to the United States and elsewhere, but the people of Alqosh stayed.
“I was born here, and I will die here,” said Athra defiantly. He explained that it was important for him to remain because “every nation has culture, identity, ethnic identity, let’s say, which is part of the world.”
Some cultures, he said, have only 500 to 1,000 years of history. “They are proud of their culture, traditions, and ethnicity. Well, I have a tradition of 7,000 years, the first language, first culture, first clothing, first agriculture, first architecture, first everything. The first Christianity was here. Of course, there were cultures before the Assyrians or Mesopotamians, but the Assyrians are a culture you can still see today.”
Athra felt that to keep his culture alive, he had to remain in his homeland. “I can be Christian wherever I go, even on Mars. I can pray and follow my Christian traditions, connect to God through my faith. But I can’t be Assyrian in France or America or anywhere else. Naturally, I would blend into the community there. If not me, then my great-grandson would be French or American.”
He concluded by stressing how vital it is to preserve his culture, not only for himself and his people, but for the world. “It’s the oldest culture in the world that still survives.”
The post Exclusive: Ancient Monastery Town in Iraq Stood Against ISIS, Residents Refuse to Leave Until Today appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.