Iraq fears for its future once Isis falls
Before ISIS militants assaulted his northern Iraqi village in 2014, an old friend called Abu Hassan and urged him to flee. But it wasn’t a friendly tip-off, he says. It was a threat. “He called to mock me,” says the 30-year-old shepherd. “He said, ‘Forget your sheep. Forget your chickens. Forget your home’.” Today, Abu […]Erika Solomon writes for Financial Times:
Before ISIS militants assaulted his northern Iraqi village in 2014, an old friend called Abu Hassan and urged him to flee. But it wasn’t a friendly tip-off, he says. It was a threat. “He called to mock me,” says the 30-year-old shepherd. “He said, ‘Forget your sheep. Forget your chickens. Forget your home’.”
Today, Abu Hassan, who asked that his real name not be used, still cannot understand how the friend he grew up with could support the jihadi group that killed thousands and branded his own minority sect infidels worthy of slaughter. “After something like this, how do people live together again?” he asks.
As the battle against Isis in Mosul enters its final stages, it is a question many are grappling with in the diverse province of Nineveh, some 300km from Baghdad and with a population of more than 3m.
