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Westerners Join Iraqi Christian Militia to Fight Islamic State
[NEWSWEEK] Saint Michael, the archangel of battle, is tattooed across the back of a U.S. army veteran who recently returned to Iraq and joined a Christian militia fighting Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... in what he sees as a biblical war between good and evil. Brett, 28, carries the same thumb-worn pocket Bible he did whilst deployed to Iraq in 2006 ‐ a picture of the Virgin Mary tucked inside its pages and his favorite verses highlighted. "It's very different," he said, asked how the experiences compared. "Here I'm fighting for a people and for a faith, and the enemy is much bigger and more brutal." Thousands of foreigners have flocked to Iraq and Syria in the past two years, mostly to join Islamic State, but a handful of idealistic Westerners are enlisting as well, citing frustration their governments are not doing more to combat the ultra-radical Islamists or prevent the suffering of innocents. The militia they joined is called Dwekh Nawsha ‐ meaning self-sacrifice in the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Christ and still used by Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves the indigenous people of Iraq. A map on the wall in the office of the Assyrian political party affiliated with Dwekh Nawsha marks the Christian towns in northern Iraq, fanning out around the city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... The majority are now under control of Islamic State, which overran Mosul last summer and issued an ultimatum to Christians: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most fled. Dwekh Nawsha operates alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces to protect Christian villages on the frontline in Nineveh province. Posted by: Fred 2015-02-16 |
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