According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), members of religious minorities in northern Iraq – such as the Christians and Yazidis – are facing new threats of Islamization now that Iraqi troops and Shiite militias have invaded Kirkuk province and other areas. “The Sunni Islamic State (IS) has been beaten. Now, however, Shiite militias are taking power in several regions that are disputed by the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Shi'ite-dominated central government in Baghdad,” said Kamal Sido in Göttingen on Friday.

“At the University of Mosul and at other places, there are now signs and placards demanding the women to comply with the Islamic dress code and to behave according to the Muslim customs,” reported the human rights defender. “These are the first signs that the situation of the Christians and the Yazidis who are living in Mosul again will not change for the better. We must fear that the radical Shiite Islam is hardly different from radical Sunni Islam.” The Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga, and Shiite militias had recently managed to drive IS out of Mosul – but the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and the militias are now taking control of the city.

The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the patriarch of Babylon, Louis Raphael I. Sako, has already appealed to the government in Baghdad and to the Kurdish regional government to stick to their promises and to do everything in their power to ensure a peaceful coexistence. The Christians and the Yazidis, who are in the minority in the Iraqi society, are about to be trapped between the frontlines.

Before the first conflicts in Iraq and the Persian Gulf broke out in the early 1990s, Mossul was a multiethnic and multicultural city. In 2003, there were still 50,000 Assyrian/Aramaic/Chaldean and Armenian Christians living together with Arabs and Kurdish Sunnis, Turkmens, Armenians, Yazidis, Shabak, and other ethnic groups and religious communities. There were about 35 churches and monasteries, some of them dating back centuries. In recent years, however, many Christian houses of worship were severely damaged or destroyed by Islamist perpetrators. Nearly all members of the minorities fled from the city when IS took control there in early June 2014. Now, many former inhabitants of Mosul are returning to their homes, although the city and many of the surrounding villages are in ruins.