Invisible Nation - Life in Iraqi Kurdistan

Every day the church bells of Ankawa compete with the muezzin's call to prayer. The oddness, the sheer unexpectedness of that familiar sound in such an antipodal setting, hits me every single time.  This part of the world's recent history has been the opposite of peaceful, descending into the barbaric with the arrival of ISIS in 2014. But it was a place once remarkable for long periods of diversity and tolerance, with Sunni and Shia, Christians, Jews, Shabak, Yazidis, Kakai and numerous other ethnic minorities co-existing. But the spasms of violence when they came - either from within or without - were, well, biblical. Outside forces - the Mongols and Ottomans chief among them - regularly visited genocidal violence on a massive scale on the lands now known as Iraq. (Up to 2 million were killed during the Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1358.) Alexander the Great was here. But there were also fratricidal massacres visited upon neighbors for religious, tribal or, later, p...

Yazidis in 2014 fleeing for their lives as ISIS swept into their homeland. The Yazidis are surely some of history's most persecuted people. I remember watching in horror the 2014 footage of helicopters airlifting stranded women and children from Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq. ISIS had stormed through Yazidi territory, murdering the men and forcing the women into sexual slavery. Up to 70,000 made it to Mount Sinjar as ISIS bore down on them. It was hot and there was no water and as many as 100 of them died of dehydration. It took the world too long to act. It is always thus, it seems, for the Yazidis.   Nadia Morad, the young Nobel Peace Prize recipient, writes that her people have With Nadia Murad. been targeted for genocide more than 70 times. This last time, at the hands of ISIS, may have been the most horrific. And the most unforgivable. For it took place before the unseeing eyes of the world. Those Yazidis who could envisage their future at the hands of the Islamic monster...

An Assyrian monk (top) looks over the Nineveh Plains from the 7th Century Rabban Hormizd Monastery outside of Al-Qosh. Carved out of the mountain and built with the local rock, it is almost impossible to see Rabban Hormizd Monastery until you are in its shadow. But when you do catch sight of it for the first time, it takes your breath away. Looking up at its cliff's-edge perch overlooking the Nineveh Plains, you know you are gazing upon a structure that has stood at the center of the cradle of civilization.  Down the road in the small town of Al-Qosh stand the new Chaldean Catholic monastery and a tomb to a Jewish prophet from the 7th Century BC. And, of course, there are mosques in every nearby town and village. The Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) has many religious and ethnic minorities, including the Yazidis, the Kakai, Chaldean Christians, Turkmen, Shabaks, and, of course, the Kurds themselves. The Kurds, with pockets of populations in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, are the world...