{"id":21813,"date":"2017-04-05T08:16:16","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T08:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=21813"},"modified":"2017-04-07T13:43:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:43:08","slug":"iraq-displaced-christians-returning-former-homelands-acn-malta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2017\/04\/05\/iraq-displaced-christians-returning-former-homelands-acn-malta\/","title":{"rendered":"IRAQ &#8211; Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands &#8211; ACN Malta"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>IRAQ &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Despite continuing insecurity, a few brave Christian and Yizidi genocide survivors have begun to return to the ruins that were once their homes and businesses.\u00a0Some Christian families have started straggling back to the eastern part of Mosul, which has recently been liberated from Islamic State by an international coalition of Iraqi army and Kurdish forces led by the United States. According to the United Nations about 30,000 people have returned to the eastern suburbs of Mosul, an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim city of 2 million, whose western part remains a war zone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Several hundred more Christian families have also returned to a few majority-Christian villages close to Kurdistan, including Teleskuf. Unlike neighbouring village Batnaya, where most homes were demolished, only 66 houses in Telskuf were destroyed \u2013 although 879 received some damage \u2013 so 85 families were able to return by early March 2017. Others have since joined them. Shops are selling meat and vegetables, but water has to be bused in and there is no electricity. Children are taken by bus to the town of Alqosh 15 minutes away for school. Nineveh\u2019s largest Christian city, Qaraqosh, which is not within the protection zone of Kurdish Peshmerga forces, remains a ghost town, with burned down homes and churches destroyed by the jihadis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Father Andrzej\u00a0 Halemba, ACN\u2019s Middle East Projects Coordinator , said: \u201cWe were expecting families to start going back in June and ACN has to be ready to help them to go back. But the latest information indicates that some families have decided to go back to the villages already during winter, despite the harsh weather conditions and very poor or destroyed infrastructure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Father Halemba added: \u201cHope is coming back to the Nineveh Plains. Despite the many urgent questions that need clarification, people are willing to return to their villages.\u201d Apart from those Christians who have already gone back to the Nineveh Plains, there is a growing desire among the remaining displaced communities to return home.\u00a0An ACN survey of 1500 displaced families who sought sanctuary in Erbil showed that of the 1,308 respondents, 87 percent might be willing to return to their villages now they have been liberated and 41 percent said that they definitely wanted to go back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">The next six months will be decisive for Iraq\u2019s Christians. This period will determine whether these ancient communities &#8212; some of whom still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth and trace their faith to Thomas the Apostle \u2013 will be able to leave the refugee camps and temporary shelters to return home. It will determine whether they can rebuild their shattered lives in the lands their families have lived in for millennia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">As their hometowns in Iraq\u2019s northern Nineveh Province become liberated in an ongoing coalition offensive and IS is driven out, Christian and other minority genocide survivors will need international help and protection if they are to survive. However, there is a new danger that Christian areas will be omitted from U.N. reconstruction plans and an ISIS\u2019 genocide investigation in Iraq to be initiated by the U.N. Security Council. The Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil\u00a0says it has received no U.N. or State Department USAID-administered humanitarian aid for 70,000 genocide survivors under its care since 2014. This encompasses the largest community of displaced Iraqi Christians, as well as some Yizidis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">A recent study by ACN indicates that the cost of rebuilding Christian villages destroyed by IS in northern Iraq could exceed \u00a3160 million (US$200 million).The ACN study which looked at 12 Christian villages, found that 11,704 homes had suffered damage \u2013 including torching \u2013 of which\u00a0669 were completely destroyed. Father Halemba, who oversaw the survey, said the charity is working with local churches to draw up plans to enable Christians to return \u2013 but\u00a0stressed that international cooperation would be needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>ACN Malta<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IRAQ &#8211;\u00a0Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands &nbsp; Despite continuing insecurity, a few brave Christian and Yizidi genocide survivors have begun to return to the ruins that were once their homes and businesses.\u00a0Some Christian families have started straggling back to the eastern part of Mosul, which has recently been liberated from Islamic State&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>IRAQ - Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands - ACN Malta - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2017\/04\/05\/iraq-displaced-christians-returning-former-homelands-acn-malta\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"IRAQ - Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands - ACN Malta - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IRAQ &#8211;\u00a0Displaced Christians are returning to their former homelands &nbsp; 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