ishtartv.com - telegraph.co.uk
By Josie Ensor, Bartella,
south of Mosul, 22 October 2016
Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) may have spared Mart Shmony Syriac Orthodox
Church, but exiled residents of the ancient Christian town of Bartella
will find what they did to it hard to forgive.
Inhabited
by Assyrians since the first century, Bartella is one of the oldest Christian
towns in the world.
It
was home to some 15,000 people until the summer of 2014, when they fled Isil’s
lighting strike across northern Iraq.
Iraq’s
elite Golden Division fought fiercely to reclaim it from the jihadists this
week, and on Saturday its bells rang out over the town for the first time in
two years.
The
road west into Bartella, just nine miles from Mosul’s outskirts, was littered
with the remnants of the battle: bullet casings, deactivated improvised
explosive devices, and shrapnel from car bombs.
Each
house along the way had a spray-painted sign at its entrance: marked either
“property of the Islamic State”, “Sunni Muslim”, or “Nasrani”, a derogatory
Arabic word for Christians.
We
reached the centre of the town in a column of humvees. Black-clad troops stood
victoriously on top, clutching guns, knives and meat cleavers.
“We are
the heroes of Golden Division, we will not stop until we reach Mosul,” they
chanted.
One
soldier, Ahmed, grabbed me by the hand and led me to see the church. We had to
run quickly in between the houses as he said there was still an Isil sniper
that they had not yet managed to capture.
Ahmed’s
radio crackled: “Daesh is firing up ahead, do not go any further,” the voice
said sternly in Arabic.
We
slipped in through the vestibule, which was dark but for a sliver of light
beaming through the lancet window.
It
had suffered only minor fire damage to its facade – but looked as if it had not
been used since the residents fled.
A
calendar from 2014 bearing a picture of Mary and the infant Jesus lay strewn on
the floor, along with hymn books and Bibles caked with dust.
“Our
God is higher than the cross,” read Isil’s black graffiti on the walls.
“The
fight for Bartella had been harder than the others we have liberated,” said
Capt Mustapha Muhsen.
He
said the special forces encountered six suicide attackers and seven car bombs
in the two-day fight to take the town.
“Perhaps
they did not want to give it up so easily because of its religious
significance.”
For
Bartella’s Christians, at least the town’s church is still standing, a
foundation on which a community scattered by war may one day gather again.
“For
the last two years, two months and 12 days, I have thought about nothing but
the moment when they tell us Isil is gone from our homes,” Nagham Joseph Abdel-Massih,
a former resident, rejoiced on Saturday.
“When
Isil came to our town, they said we had a choice – convert to Islam, pay them a
religious tax or be executed,” she said, speaking from her home in a refugee
camp in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil.
“When
they started taking down the crosses from the churches and burning the
scriptures, we knew we weren’t safe.”
That
same day, Mrs Abdel-Massih, 29, her husband and two daughters, eight and six,
left on foot, walking for miles through desert land until they finally reached
a checkpoint.
Many
the Telegraph spoke to said they were afraid there would be nothing left to
come back to.
“I
expect there will be a lot of damage everywhere,” said Osman Najib, 28, who
runs a hummus stand in Ainkawa 2 camp. “But it won’t prevent me from going
back.”
Most
of his friends and customers in Erbil are also planning to return, he said.
They feel it is their religious duty.
But
others questioned whether they had any future in Iraq, where Christians have
faced persecution for years.
“Many
of the Sunnis from the surrounding villages moved into our homes after we left
and took our possessions, so we cannot trust them,” said Thamer Ghayath, a
35-year-old father of two who used to work as a security guard at his local
church.
“How
can we live together peacefully now?”
Mr
Ghayath said he thought Christians were no longer safe in the Middle East and
that while “daesh” may be expelled for now, there will be another Isil
tomorrow.
“Many
of us want to go back just to collect what’s left of our belongings, sell our
land and move to Europe,” he said. “Of course I’m heartbroken, but I can’t go
through it again.”
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