'Indigenous People Are Still at Risk in Iraq'

A decade after ISIS invaded Mosul, leading to genocide and abductions, Assyrians, Yazidis and other communities remain ina precarious state

- RAMSEN SHAMON

MY RELATIVES FLED MOSUL TO save their lives before ISIS invaded and seized power in the summer of 2014.

The invasion of Iraq's second largest city not only uprooted my relatives, Indigenous Assyrians, but it also led to the genocide of Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs (Christians) as well as Shiite Muslims and Yazidis.

Ten years have passed since radical Islamic militants invaded Mosul, known as biblical Nineveh, once a capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, destroying anything and killing anyone who did not submit to their deranged version of Islam. Have things improved for Iraq's Indigenous Assyrians following ISIS's defeat?

In 2014, I was a graduate journalism student in Chicago, alarmed at the news occurring half a world away-where my relatives, whom I had never met at the time, were facing religious persecution head-on.

I recall telling my classmates that the invasion of Mosul would lead to widespread destruction in the region and the genocide of those who did not submit to their radical ways. I was met with laughs and shrugs. They couldn't care less and did not believe ISIS would turn into what it infamously became-a nonstop killing machine, hungry to control more swaths of land at the expense of Indigenous communities, whose art they destroyed and sold on the black market in their lucrative "antiquities division."