ICC Note:
Prior to ISIS’s two and a half year occupation, Qaraqosh was the largest Christian city in Iraq. The liberation of Qaraqosh has led some families to return home. However, many more have yet to return. With the school year about to start in Iraq, some local leaders are concerned that displaced Christians will decide to remain in the area where their children are enrolled rather than return to their local communities. Christian children especially have been traumatized by the destruction wrought by ISIS, and many families continue to struggle in adapting to their new lives.
08/23/2017 Iraq (Jewish News Service) – Before Islamic State swept across the Nineveh Plains in the summer of 2014, driving more than 100,000 Christians into exile in Kurdistan, some 5,000 Syriac-Catholic families made their homes on ancient ancestral land in the town of Qaraqosh.
More than half of those families have school-age children, and international agencies have repaired a significant amount of the damage done to schools during the Islamic State occupation. Schools are ready to welcome students to the new academic year. But the great challenge is that many of the families’ homes still await repair or rebuilding. To date, only 600 out of the 5,000 families ousted from Qaraqosh have been able to move back into their homes there.
Syriac-Catholic Father Georges Jahola, who represents his church on the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee and oversees reconstruction work in Qaraqosh, put it bluntly: “If their homes are not ready for families to move back in by September and the start of the school year, many of the Christians might well decide to go elsewhere—this time leaving Iraq for good.”
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