Photo courtesy of the Scottish Bible Society

"There are Horrific Stories"

Monday October 13 2014

Jackie Macadam hears from a man at the sharp end of the refugee crisis caused by the fighting in Iraq.

Nabil Omiesh (right) from the Bible Society in Iraq visited Scotland last week, giving an eyewitness account of the desperate situation facing refugees from the Isis fighting. Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan is at the centre of this influx of refugees.

“So many people are arriving that the Kurdistan government says it won’t be able to meet all their needs,” he says.

“The Islamic State (Isis) controls large areas of Iraq and is creating a huge humanitarian crisis.

“We are currently dealing with around 1.5 million people. When Isis fighters approach a village [the ‘villages’ referred to are what we would class as towns, sometimes the size of Aberdeen] the residents just up and abandon their lives.

“They are terrified.

“Isis is something different. It is a very savage organization. They use social media to terrify and cause great fear, confusion and horror among populations they are moving towards. They are very well armed. To a large degree at the moment, in spite of the air strikes, they are moving quickly across the country and causing an enormous humanitarian upheaval before them.”

The Bible Society in Iraq employs three staff. Nabil is based in neighbouring Jordan and frequently travels into Iraq, whilst his two colleagues are based in Iraq along with around 15 volunteers. Their primary job is to work with churches and help distribute Bibles in the language of the countries they work in, but more and more they are having to try to take on the work of helping the refugees as well.

“The refugee situation is bleak,” says Nabil. “They arrive without anything: no money, no clothes nothing to eat or live on. The patrols and checkpoints they have gone past have often stripped them of any identity papers as well, so it’s impossible to prove who they are or where they are from. That’s giving rise to suspicions that Isis fighters are smuggling themselves in with the refugees, just waiting for a chance to attack from within. It’s leading to a great sense of suspicion, distrust and fear of the refugees as well.

“There are horrific stories. One woman, Aida, managed to get three of her four children to safety when she heard Isis was coming, but she kept her toddler child with her as the baby needed her mother.

“Isis overran the town quickly and people had to stay indoors. After two weeks they had eaten everything in the house and decided to leave when the Christians were ordered out of Mosul. Aida and her husband and child made it as far as a road block where two young Isis fighters demanded the baby from the couple. There was nothing they could do. In spite of following the fighters with the child to the head of the group, the husband was beaten so badly he nearly died and Aida was threatened with death on the spot. Aida cries all the time. Her husband has been left blind after the attack and Aida is inconsolable. She feels she should not have given her baby up and feels terrible shame.”

The Scottish Bible Society is appealing to Scottish Christians to support their counterparts in Iraq. To find out more, visit their website.