Iraq’s Christians fear new ISIS-linked unrest, citing threats from militias, legal discrimination, and fading hope for security or reform.
Newsroom (02/02/2026 Gaudium Press ) Iraq’s Christian communities are sounding the alarm amid rising instability along the Syrian border and growing concern over Islamist resurgence. The transfer of thousands of ISIS detainees from northeastern Syria to new facilities in Iraq, deemed a “safe site” by Baghdad, has reignited fears of renewed violence in a country still haunted by decades of sectarian conflict.
Bishop Bashar Matti Warda, Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, described the situation as a familiar and perilous echo of the past. “History teaches us that fire does not recognize borders,” he warned, arguing that Iraq’s fragile stability could once again be consumed by regional unrest. For communities still recovering from ISIS’s reign of terror, the mere prospect of resurgence intensifies deep-rooted trauma.
A Historic Wound Reopened
Speaking to ACI MENA, Warda said Iraq’s Christian families desperately seek lasting peace, yet every spark of violence brings back memories of displacement and persecution. Two-thirds of Iraq’s Christians, he noted, had already fled over the past two decades—not as emigrants, but as exiles forced by fear that their homeland could no longer protect them.
“That anxiety,” Warda explained, “is not weakness—it is a memory of pain.”
Still, he emphasized hope as both moral resistance and practical courage: “The strongest response to violence is rooted in dignity, shared life, and dialogue.”
Yet that hope persists against staggering demographic decline. Card. Louis Raphael Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, warned that Iraq’s once-thriving Christian population—1.5 million in the early 2000s—has fallen below 500,000, and perhaps to 250,000 according to human-rights researchers at the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization.
Long Before ISIS, a Pattern of Persecution
Dr. John Eibner, president of Christian Solidarity International (CSI), contextualizes the crisis as part of a deeper historical pattern. “ISIS is only an episode in a long history of displacement,” he said. The violence tied to the 2003 Iraq War unleashed security vacuums and sectarian militias, but its roots stretch back through decades of persecution across the region.
When ISIS seized Mosul in June 2014, its fighters demolished churches, homes, and sacred artifacts while forcing Christians either to convert, flee, or die. The destruction of Christian towns such as Qaraqosh and Bartella was total—spiritual, cultural, and communal. Yet, as Eibner and local monitors warn, the end of ISIS’s territorial rule brought little real peace.
Life Under Militia Control
Today, discrimination and insecurity remain daily realities. From harassment at checkpoints to threats of land seizure and restricted movement, Iraq’s Christian citizens live under the shadow of both weak state authority and powerful non-state actors. The Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—ostensibly integrated into the security structure—have, according to Hammurabi’s co-founder William Warda, become de facto lords over several once-Christian districts.
Warda notes that fear of these militias’ “unchecked dominance” now poses a greater obstacle to Christian return than the physical memories of violence. “Any new tension,” he said, “could turn minority regions into war zones again.”
Economic Pressures and the “Disputed Lands”
Survival is made harder by economic deprivation. Because many traditionally Christian areas lie within “disputed territories” between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, both sides hesitate to invest. The result is abandonment—an “economic persecution,” Warda calls it—marked by unemployment, poor infrastructure, and state closures of Christian-owned businesses and social clubs.
CSI and Hammurabi have sought to counter these pressures through youth-focused economic projects, but without jobs or reliable services, few returnees can sustain family life in ancestral towns.
Faith on Trial: Forced Conversion by Law
Legal discrimination compounds insecurity. Iraq’s 2016 National Identity Card Law enforces automatic conversion to Islam for minors when one parent converts, a rule rooted in legislation from 1972. The case of Evlin Joseph in Dohuk illustrates the law’s reach: though she lived her life as a Christian wife and mother, local authorities ordered her and her children registered as Muslims because her mother had converted decades earlier.
This legal asymmetry—non-Muslims may convert to Islam, but Muslims may not convert away—creates what Eibner calls “a state-sanctioned mechanism of demographic erosion.” Courts treat conversion away from Islam as apostasy, while forced conversions steadily shrink minority communities.
Between Reform and Fragmentation
Efforts are underway to reform these frameworks. After the Iraqi Parliament endorsed the Jaafari Code in early 2025—granting Shia Muslims their own personal-status law—some Christian leaders called for a similar statute to protect their family and inheritance rights. Yet William Warda cautions that multiple religious laws could sow greater division. Instead, he advocates a unified civil reform that codifies equal status for all minorities, including Christians and Yazidis, within the Personal Status Law.
Among the priorities: repeal of forced conversion clauses, equality between men and women in inheritance, and legal mechanisms to secure property restitution and personal freedoms.
The Test of Iraq’s Pluralism
For Iraq’s Christians, survival now depends less on foreign aid than on domestic courage—political reform, legal protection, and state accountability. Without these, warns Eibner of CSI, “the exodus will continue, potentially leading to the permanent displacement of Iraq’s Christians from their ancestral homeland.”
In the heart of the cradle of civilization, the struggle of Iraq’s Christian minority mirrors the country’s broader challenge: whether a nation defined by centuries of diversity can find the will to protect its difference—or once more let history burn through its borders.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from CNA and csi-int.org
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