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Once again, Christians are fleeing Iraq. But this time, its not because they are under attack from the jihadi extremists who have terrorized their communities for the past fourteen years. Its not even because of ISIS, which physically occupied the Nineveh Plain until just recently.

Its because they have lost hope that they can ever trust their neighbors again.

The situation for Christians is catastrophic, the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Babylon, Archbishop Louis Sako, told me during a recent trip to northern Iraq.

According to the Hammurabi Human Rights Organizations, nearly half of the 120,000 Christian refugees who fled the Nineveh Plain to the camps controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government when ISIS attacked in June 2014 have now left the country for good.

Emigration actually increased after the liberation, said Louis Markos, a town councilman from Baghdeda (also known as Qaraqosh), the regional capitol of the Assyrian homeland in the Nineveh Plain, about 20 miles southeast of Mosul. When people went back and saw their houses ransacked, burned, or destroyed, they lost heart. They had waited for three years for their nightmare to end. It never did.

While the U.S. government has earmarked more than $100 million in reconstruction funds to help restore vital infrastructure to the Christian and Yezidi areas in northern Iraq, so far local residents see only devastation.

We havent seen a dollar of U.S. reconstruction funds, the Patriarch told me. Nothing has come.

A U.S. official involved in the funding, which Vice President Mike Pence pledged personally to the Patriarch when he visited the White House in May, told me the money has been sent to U.S. AID in Erbil and to the United Nations. Its to be spent on restoring water and electricity in the Nineveh Plain, he said. But if there are no people, they cant spend it.

Its a chicken and egg problem, I admit, he added. No people, no power. No power and water, no people.

The Patriarch insisted that Christians return home, despite the devastation. If we dont rebuild, others will come to occupy our villages and towns, he said. Already, they are putting pressure on Christians to prevent them from returning home.

Checkpoints manned separately by Kurdish Democratic Party peshmerga fighters and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) militias make it difficult for families to return. At each of these checkpoints, we often wait up to two hours, Markos told me. Two weeks ago, I was turned back.

The KDP and the PMF have established a military Line of Control, effectively dividing the Assyrian Christian and Yazidi Nineveh Plain into two separate zones.

Towns that used to be just a ten minute drive from each other are now walled off from one another, requiring hours to reach crossing points manned by the warring militias.

The Kurds have been hardening their side of the border, to the north, by erecting concrete barriers and blockhouses, U.S. officials told me. While Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government, both insist that the military line is just a temporary separation, Assyrian Christian leaders fear it will become permanent, leaving them hopelessly divided.

Making matters worse, the Kurdish Democratic Party of KRG president Massoud Barzani has deposed prominent Assyrian Christian mayors in the Nineveh Plain in recent weeks, first in al Qosh and more recently in Tel Kaif, replacing them with Christian members of the KDP.

The move was so unpopular that protestors rattled the normally congenial KRG envoy to Washington, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, at a recent event at the U.S. Institute for Peace, calling on the KDP to get out of the Nineveh Plain.

The Nineveh Plain is not a disputed area, as some are claiming, the Patriarch reminded me. The Kurds and the Shia want to occupy the areas they liberated. They have no right to this.

Restoring trust among the many ethnic and religious communities of Northern Iraq will not be a simple task. The U.S. Institute of Peace has been holding workshops in the Nineveh Plain for many years in an effort to build bridges between mutually suspicious communities, some of them shut down by the KDP.

We Christians are the meat in the sandwich between the Arabs and the Kurds, the recently deposed Mayor of Tel Keif, Bassam Bello, told me six years ago during an earlier trip to the region.

When ISIS seized control of the area in June 2014, it was Sunni Arabs who ate the sandwich. Today, the Christians are being nibbled at both ends by Kurdish and Shiite Arab militias.

Our goal is to make the Nineveh Plain a magnet for Reconstruction, Yohanna Yousef Towaya, a local businessman who works with the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, told me. We are looking for private partners and NGOs to help us rebuild houses so migrs will return.

A big task, but an imperative one. Without reconstruction in the Nineveh Plain, there will be no more Christians in Iraq in a few years.

Kenneth R. Timmerman was on the national security and foreign policy advisory board of Trump for President, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 2006.

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Christian Genocide In Iraq: The Patriarch's Plea - The Daily Caller

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Ankara to prevent 'artificial states' in Iraq, Syria Kurdistan24 ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) - The Ankara government is not going to tolerate the formation of any new, 'artificial' states along its southern border with Iraq and Syria where Kurds in both countries have in recent years made large political ... A referendum on Kurdish independence from Iraq carries grave risksThe Economist No Time for Kurdish Independence in IraqThe American Conservative Kurdish leader: Poll to achieve 'separation from Iraq'Middle East Monitor Sputnik International -Asharq Al-awsat English all 70 news articles »

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Ankara to prevent 'artificial states' in Iraq, Syria - Kurdistan24

Iraq is in the grip of a heatwave of such severity that people are being sent home from work for their own safety.

The Gulf News reports that civil servants were told to take the day off Thursday as temperatures hit 122F (50C). The cities of Basra and Mosul experienced similar conditions, Gulf News said.

Demand for electricity has soared as people keep air-conditioners running to cope with the heat, but the state energy company is unable to cope and blackouts have added to the misery.

"The generator in my neighborhood that provides electricity for about 300 houses has caught fire from the heat," one resident of Baghdad told the Guardian . He added: "Weve never witnessed such a summer before.

Another resident told the paper that many people were experiencing headaches and that children were being sent to swimming pools for the entire day to protect them from the scorching temperatures.

The Gulf News reports that temperatures are forecast to rise next week to 124F (51C). It said that public showers and water cooling fans had been set up in some areas, but that Iraqis who could afford it were fleeing the country to cooler spots in the region.

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Iraq Is in the Grip of a Ferocious Heatwave and It's Forecast to Get Worse - TIME

BAGHDAD, IraqIraqi Sunni politician and leader of the Ummah Party Mithal al-Alusi says that Iraq has failed its people and that the Kurds are justified in their quest for separation and the establishment of a state of their own. This is a cardboard state, says al-Alusi in an interview with al-Iraqiya state television. The Kurds have the right to say: I dont want to be part of such a failed state. Al-Alusi, who describes himself as a secular politician from Anbar, cites the interference of regional countries as proof of Iraqs failure. Is Qasem Soleimani entering Iraq on a visa? Does he have residency permit? he asks. Iranian intelligence working as advisors is this sovereignty? Saudi money piling up with the Sunnis, is this Iraqi sovereignty and an intact state? Soleimani is the commander of Irans Quds Force who is said to have been hired by the Iraqi government as an advisor to the defense ministry. Al-Alusi who has been elected twice to the parliament and is a proponent of good relations with the West, including Israel, believes that Iraq has violated its own constitution which has given the Kurds a reason to seek a path of separation. We all voted for and agreed on this constitution that stipulates the unity of Iraq, but where has it got now and what democracy have we Iraqis got? he says. He argues that you cannot keep a nation together by force. A referendum is not against the nation of Iraq, and the nation you are talking about was created by sword and stick by Saddam Hussein, he tells the Iraqi news channel. If thats the nation you want then Im neither part of it nor represent it. Al-Alusi says that Iraqi politics, especially the structure of the government does not reflect the countrys diversity. Kurds, Yezidis, Christians, Sunnis and even some Shias cannot feel that this sectarian government represents them, he retorts. Bring me ten Iraqis who would say this has been working system. Ten ordinary people not politicians. When you say that the PM must be a Shiite I as a secular man wont accept that. When the speaker of the house must be a Sunni, I wont accept, he goes on to say. Why not a Yezidi or a Christian? Al-Alusi refers to a time when Iraqi politicians were seeking to change the former Iraqi regime from inside Kurdistan. We all Iraqi politicians used to fight on Kurdish soil under one slogan: democracy for Iraq and freedom for Kurds, he says. Have we given the Kurds any of their rights? He concludes that not only the Kurds, but all Iraqis have the right to choose their own path as he warns that that might be the case given todays reality. If the Kurds chose this path, are we going to fight them with an army? he says. With this situation there is going to be a hundred states.

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Sunni leader: You can't rule Iraq by sword, Kurdish separation justified - Rudaw

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2017 With 50 percent of Raqqa, Syria, now under the control of Syrian Defense Forces and holding forces in place in Mosul, Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has no safe haven left in either country, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman said today.

Army Col. Ryan S. Dillon, briefing the media live from Baghdad, gave an update on operations in Syria and Iraq, noting that determined SDF fighters continue to make progress against ISIS as they fight block by block in Raqqa.

The SDF has now cleared more than 50 percent of the city from terrorists, Dillon said.

The SDF are in a fierce urban fight and have almost managed to link up their forces along the eastern and western axes as they conduct deliberate clearance operations of areas under their control, he added.

Syria Operations

Fighting in the tightly packed old city is difficult because buildings and even corpses are rigged with improvised explosives by ISIS to stall the SDF advance, the colonel said.

In the past week, ISIS has used car bombs to attack evacuating civilians and working journalists. In attacks two days in a row, ISIS used armored vehicles packed with explosives to kill six noncombatants and wound five reporters, he said.

The Raqqa Internal Security Force, otherwise known as the RISF, now more than 1,000 strong and composed mainly of Arabs from the Raqqa area, is filling in behind the SDF to provide security and prevent ISIS from returning to cleared neighborhoods, Dillon said.

In southern Syria, near the Iraq-Syria border, there were clashes Monday between ISIS and militia groups, he said, noting that there were initial allegations of coalition strikes on Iraqi popular mobilization forces.

"We verified that the coalition did not conduct air or ground artillery strikes in that location at that time," the colonel said. "This has since been confirmed and corroborated by Iraqi security forces and Iraqi popular mobilization forces."

Rebuilding Iraq

Holding forces are in place in Mosul, Dillon said, and the federal police, the 16th Iraqi Armored Division and some Counter Terrorism Service battalions remain in eastern and western Mosul to provide security as the cleanup begins and civilians start rebuilding their lives.

We have seen the resilience of the Moslawis in East Mosul and we are beginning to see it in the west as markets open and people begin to return to their neighborhoods. The coalition continues to support the [Iraqis] as they reset and prepare for follow-on operations in Tal Afar, he said.

The coalition conducted more than 50 strikes in the past week against ISIS defensive positions, headquarters, weapons caches and vehicle bomb and road bomb factories in Tal Afar and Kisik Junction, which is about 30 kilometers east of Tal Afar, Dillon said, where ISIS is defending the approach to the city.

The coalition estimates that about 2,000 ISIS fighters are in and around Tal Afar, and the colonel said the fight to root them out from one of ISIS' last Iraq strongholds is expected to be difficult, he said.

In former ISIS strongholds, where local Iraqis are back in control and taking care of their people, we see continued progress, Dillon said.

In Tikrit, liberated in April 2015, more than 95 percent of those who fled the city have returned, the colonel said. In Ramadi, liberated in February 2016, more than 300,000 displaced persons have returned, and 20 schools, 18 health centers and 250 houses are rehabilitated, he added.

In Fallujah, liberated in June 2016, 400,000 displaced persons have returned, clean water is pumped to 60 percent of residents, and projects have begun to rehabilitate more than 10,000 houses over the next 18 months, Dillon said.

After ISIS is removed from an area, it is cleared of hazards, international aid and local governance resumes, he said.

Degrading ISIS Finances

Highlighting success in degrading ISIS financial resources, Dillon said the coalition conducted precision airstrikes on five ISIS financial centers in Iraq and Syria over the past two weeks.

In southern Syria, two airstrikes in Abu Kamal destroyed an ISIS financial headquarters and a bulk cash depository, and another ISIS financial headquarters was destroyed in Deir ez-Zor. Two airstrikes in Iraq destroyed ISIS financial centers in Huwayjah and al-Muthanna, the colonel said.

The coalition is disrupting ISIS financing across Iraq and Syria to keep the terrorist organization from raising, moving and using the resources to pay for fighters and fund terrorism around the globe, Dillon said.

The coalition has struck about 30 ISIS banks and financial centers over the past three years, destroying tens of millions of dollars, and Iraqi government has cut off more than 90 bank branches inside ISIS territory from global financial systems, he added.

ISIS also is under significant pressure because the coalition is targeting its oil and other revenue streams, the colonel said.

They have been forced to cut fighter pay by half, and having lost Mosul, and with the SDF making steady progress in Raqqa, ISIS has lost much of its revenue base, Dillon explained.

ISIS is becoming increasingly desperate and resorting to more arbitrary taxation and extortion, undermining credibility with the local population and attractiveness to recruits, he added.

These efforts along with ISIS battlefield losses, leader deaths and degraded propaganda all contribute to a losing organization, Dillon said.

ISIS does not have the same level of leadership it once had. They do not have the same level of grandeur. People just no longer want to come and join these terrorists. And they do not have the resources they once had, he noted.

ISIS is losing [and] it will continue to lose under the pressure of our partner forces and the coalition until they are defeated in Iraq and Syria, Dillon said.

Follow Cheryl Pellerin on Twitter @PellerinDoDNews

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OIR Spokesman: No Safe Havens Left for ISIS in Syria or Iraq - Department of Defense