Iraq: Christians Say Terror Drove Them From Mosul

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/07/christians-terror-mosul.html

Iraq: Christians Say Terror Drove Them From Mosul
By contributors | Jul. 24, 2014
By Abdul Hamid Zebari via RFE/RL

Rawan Jinan, a 25-year-old Iraqi Christian, says when she received an order on June 18 to leave Mosul within 24 hours, she could not believe her eyes.

The order came in the form of a letter delivered to every Christian home by the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which rules Iraq’s second-largest city. The letter offered the recipients just three choices: to convert to Islam, to begin paying a monthly tax for practicing a religion other than Islam, or to be executed if they remained in Mosul.

Jinan, now in a refugee camp near Irbil, in the Kurdish autonomous region, says she and her husband stared at the paper in amazement. “We were prepared for anything, but we were not expecting to be banished from our city in this manner,” she says. “When we first heard Christians should leave the city, we thought this meant that Mosul was about to be targeted by heavy shelling. We did not know they were going to rob us and throw us out.”

The couple initially thought the letter was an evacuation, not expulsion, order because they and their two young sons — one 4 years old, the other 18 months — had already fled fighting in Mosul once. That was when ISIL captured the city in three days of combat that ended with the rout of the Iraqi Army on June 9.

[NaturalHigh]

1. My wife was telling me about this yesterday, among other things.

It's getting really scary over there, and I have no idea what the solution is.

[Jschwo]

2. Support Kurdish Independence

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/support-kurdish-independence/wk7K9SSp