Will Iraq's minorities return to their homelands post-IS?
As Iraqi forces are advancing against the Islamic State, Iraqi minorities express their worries about the future of their lands post-IS.
BAGHDAD — With the imminent launch of the operation to liberate Mosul, announced by Iraqi Minister of Defense Khaled al-Obaidi on Aug. 8, the Chaldean National Council — which got together on the occasion of the second anniversary of the displacement of Christians from Mosul — expressed concern about the future of minority areas after the liberation operations end. Representatives of other minority communities share this concern about their areas; the Yazidis are concerned about Sinjar, the Turkmens about Tal Afar and the Shabak community, Christians and other minorities fear for the Ninevah Plains.
These areas are known as “disputed territories,” a description that deprives the minorities from determining their own fate, since it indicates that these areas have long been disputed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi federal government.
Prince Breen Tahseen Bek, a representative of the Yazidi royal institute, told Al-Monitor, “When we speak with representatives of the federal government or the KRG, the discourse tends to take a turn toward finding out whether we are with them or against them. The Kurdish and Arab political elites do not take the Yazidi genocide seriously; all they care about is whether our areas will be part of the federal government or the KRG.”
Thus, the representatives of minority communities hope for an internationally supervised negotiation process on the disputed internal borders for areas that are ethnically, religiously and linguistically diversified, but are subject to an Arab-Kurdish conflict that could clearly drag the country into an internal war.
