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QARAQOSH, Iraq: With Daesh expelled, Iraqi Christians are trickling back to the ransacked town of Qaraqosh, beset by anxiety for their security and yet hopeful they can live in friendship with Muslims of all persuasions.
The town, about 20 km from the battlefront with Daesh in the northern city of Mosul, shows why Christians have mixed feelings about the future of their ancient community.
In the desecrated churches of Qaraqosh, Christians are busy removing graffiti daubed by the militants during two and a half years of control — only for new slogans to have appeared, scrawled by Shiite members of the Iraqi forces fighting street to street with the terrorists in Mosul.
Encouraged by security checkpoints and patrols by a volunteer force, up to 10 Christian families have returned to what used to be the minority’s biggest community in Iraq until Daesh seized it in 2014.
Iraqi forces pushed the group out of Qaraqosh in October, part of a six-month offensive to retake Mosul. But residents are worried that the Shiite slogans signal a new kind of sectarian division.
“We are afraid of this, of tensions,” said Girgis Youssif, a church worker. “We want to live in peace and demand security,” said Youssif, who returned after fleeing to Irbil, about 60 km away in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Two Shiite flags also fly over Qaraqosh.
Most Sunnis, who are the dominant community in Mosul, have shrugged off the Shiite slogans as the work of a handful of religious zealots but Christians take them as a signal that their future remains uncertain.
“Of course we are afraid of such signs,” said Matti Yashou Hatti, a photographer who still lives in Irbil with his family. “We need international protection.”
Those families who have returned to Qaraqosh — once home to 50,000 people — are trying to revive Christian life dating back two millennia. However, most stay only two or three days at a time to refurbish their looted and burnt homes.
“We want to come back but there is no water and power,” said Mazam Nesin, a Christian who works for a volunteer force based in Qaraqosh but has left his family behind in Irbil.
By contrast, displaced Muslims have been flocking back to markets in eastern Mosul since Daesh’s ejection from that part of the city, despite the battle raging in the Old City across the Tigris river which is the militants’ last stronghold.
Numbers of Christians in Iraq have fallen from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand since the violence, which followed the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein. Many Baghdad residents who could not afford to go abroad went to Qaraqosh and other northern towns where security used to be better than in the capital, rocked by sectarian warfare after the US-led invasion.
But with the arrival of Daesh, residents abandoned their homes with some applying for asylum in Europe. Germany alone took in 130,000 Iraqis, among them many Christians, in 2015 and 2016. But most ended up in Irbil with relatives or in homes paid for by aid agencies.
Supermarkets and restaurants remain closed in Qaraqosh, with windows smashed and burnt furniture strewn across floors.
Army and police have tried to ease fears by stationing soldiers in front of churches, and even helping Christian volunteers to set up a massive cross at the town’s entrance.
On Palm Sunday last weekend, soldiers escorted a procession in preparation for Easter, Christianity’s most important festival, and provided chairs for worshippers.
Some Christian policemen joined in, singing “Hallelujah” with civilians. But walking along rows of burnt out homes and supermarkets, others were still afraid.
“The security measures are not sufficient,” said Hatti, the photographer. “We want security to surround the town.”