11 years since ISIS invaded the Nineveh Plain Region

The largest Assyrian city in Iraq, Baghdede, in the Al-Hamdaniya District, was captured by ISIS on August 6, 2014. Because the community was already aware of the horrific crimes in Sinjar and Mosul just days earlier, most of the 60,000 residents fled to Assyrian communities further north. By the time Baghdede was liberated on October 19, 2016, with $135 million in damages, churches and homes destroyed, 40% of Assyrian residents had already emigrated abroad or had decided to stay in Assyrian communities in Northern Iraq.

In total, about 120,000 Assyrians are estimated to have fled the Nineveh Plain region that night out of fear of slaughter.

Among them were Assyrians who had fled Mosul just a few weeks earlier. The Assyrians' flight from Daesh militants had began already in June 2014, when the so-called Islamic State succeeded in capturing Mosul. At the beginning of that summer, at least 1,200 Assyrian families lived in Mosul alone.

Unstable situation

The current situation in the Nineveh Plain Region (NPR) is both positive and negative. ISIS never accomplished their ultimate goal of complete ethnic cleansing and Assyrians have come back to rebuild their homes and towns in the Nineveh Plain Region in significant numbers. Eleven years after the islamic onslaught, Baghdede, as well as most of the Nineveh Plain Region shows clear signs of life and normalcy.

Problems persist however in this contested region as different actors work to undermine the will of the local population. On one hand, Shia-elements aligned with Iran are working to increase their political and military control of the NPR, while the dominant Kurdish KDP party continues its claims on a region with almost no Kurds, buying influence and continuing its military presence in the regions' northern towns like Alqosh.