CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- In the midst of advances by Sunni insurgents, Iraq\u2019s remaining Christian community\u00a0 and the country\u2019s majority- Shia population face threats to their future, and continued violence.<\/p>\n\tIn response to the developing situation, the United States is deploying 275 troops to protect its embassy in Baghdad and its citizens in the country, and is also removing a portion of its diplomatic presence.<\/p>\n
\tMembers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a militant group that operates in Iraq and Syria with the aim of establishing a caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq, overtook the country\u2019s second-largest city, Mosul, and the city of Tikrit, 95 miles north of Baghdad, on June 10.<\/p>\n
\tThe group had seized portions of Ramadi and Falluja earlier; Tal Afar was seized by ISIS June 16; and the group briefly held parts of Baquba, 37 miles outside of Baghdad, the following day.<\/p>\n
\tISIS currently controls much of the Sunni areas of northern and western Iraq, as well as cities along the Euphrates river in northwest Syria.<\/p>\n
\tThe organization, which had been called Al-Qaeda in Iraq, seeks to establish a Sunni state within the majority Shia region. In February 2014, Al-Qaeda cut ties with ISIS over disagreements regarding ideology.<\/p>\n
\tAccording to National Public Radio, ISIS is \u201cboasting of mass executions of Shiite members\u201d of Iraqi security focus, and while the organization promises safety for civilians in areas they control, they must follow sharia and repent of previous cooperation with the Iraqi government, or face death or punitive amputation.<\/p>\n
\tShiite mosques have been the target of attacks and gunfire in Mosul and other ISIS-controlled regions; when the group took over Ar Raqqah in Syria last year, they imposed the jiyza tax on the city's Christian inhabitants.<\/p>\n
\tGiven the organization\u2019s advance upon the capital, a \u201csubstantial number\u201d of the personnel working at the American embassy will be moved to another location,\u00a0 according to reports by the New York Times. The U.S. State department has not disclosed the number of staff members who will be relocated, but has said that the embassy is not scheduled to close.<\/p>\n
\tThe embassy, which boasts a staff of 5,500, is the largest United States embassy in the world, and was meant to act as a significant diplomatic presence in Iraq after American forces left Iraq in 2011.<\/p>\n
\tPoliticians and religious freedom experts are concerned that ISIS will pose a serious threat not only to Shias, but also to the country\u2019s remaining Christians.<\/p>\n
\tDuring the Iraq War, from 2003 to 2011, the country\u2019s \u201cChristian community has suffered intense religious persecution on top of the effects of the conflict and, as a result, it\u2019s shrunk by well over 50 percent,\u201d said religious freedom expert Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute in a June 10 article in National Review Online.<\/p>\n
\tMany of the Christians who remained in the country relocated to Mosul, Shea explained, saying that the fall of Mosul to ISIS will have serious \u201cimplications for Iraq\u2019s Christian community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIn recent years, tens of thousands of Christians have moved from Mosul, Baghdad, and other Iraqi cities, to the relative security of Iraqi Kurdistan and its largest city, Arbil.<\/p>\n
\tIn a June 12 statement, Congressman Frank Wolf (R- Va.) worried that the violence in Iraq would affect innocents across the country, \u201cnot the least of which are vulnerable religious minorities which for centuries have inhabited these lands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tArchbishop Emil Nona of the Chaldean Archeparchy of Mosul said June 11 to Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity, that he worried that \"now there is probably no one left\u201d in Mosul from the city\u2019s Christian community.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe have never seen anything like this, a large city such as Mosul attacked and in chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tDespite these threats, Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad told Aid to the Church in Need June 16 that Iraqi leaders should work together \u2013 and not rely on international intervention \u2013 to resolve the crisis.<\/p>\n
\t\u00a0\u201cIn responding to this crisis, the international community should think of the common good, not their own interests,\u201d Archbishop Sleiman said. \u201cThey should think of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tWhile ISIS \u201cneeds to be stopped,\u201d he continued, \u201cit needs the Iraqi leaders to work together to stop it. That is more important than getting the international community involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI hope Iraqi leaders will find a consensus about how to tackle this situation or there will be a tragic outcome. I don\u2019t know what will happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe should all pray for peace and solidarity and for a solution to the crisis,\u201d he urged.<\/p>\n
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