Once at the church, our wet and straggly little delegation – a retired U.S. general, a medic, a former Hollywood actor (with the soap opera Dallas and a James Bond film on his credits) who is now in the NGO world, and me, plus a handful of Peshmerga friends who offered to escort us – is received by the bishop and two of his priests. Besides absorbing and somehow managing to care for the thousands of refugees from the surrounding villages and towns, they are also the custodians of the Al Qosh synagogue, just steps away, which their predecessors volunteered to protect when the last Jews left the area. This is the frontline not only for Christianity in Mesopotamia, but also for its history as the cradle of religions, as a place where Christians, Jews and Muslims once lived as friendly neighbors. This is not an idealistic vision imposed by our outside lens. You can still see it in the relaxed manner in which the Peshmerga now sprawl in the bishop’s receiving room sipping his tea, in their banter with the youngest priest, in the dismay on their faces when they saw the beautiful interior of Batnaya’s church desecrated into stomped bits of plaster, the Virgin minus her head and hands, the hateful threats. The goal is to defeat ISIS, yes. But the goal is also to have the remaining Christians stay, and not disperse into Western Europe or the Americas, to not allow ISIS, even in defeat, to change the face of Kurdistan.                                                                 

So we are next taken to Telaskov, where the goal of holding fast to a multifaith Kurdistan still has a chance. Telaskov translates as “Bishop’s Hill.” Formerly home to eleven thousand people, it was a thriving, modern town, and a drive through its abandoned streets reveals bus stops surrounded by brightly painted benches, parks, coffee shops and modern apartment complexes. In 2014, ISIS advanced and the population fled. The Peshmerga, supported by armed Christians, were able to retake it quickly, which accounts for the comparatively light damage it suffered. But the front line to Mosul is a mere ten-minute drive from here; also, ISIS had sufficient time to booby-trap and mine the houses before its retreat. So the city remains abandoned, a ghost town, the set of an action movie gone wrong. Still, this is a town that can one day be revived. It won’t require that much. Cleanup, yes, including de-mining. And the restoration of infrastructure. Of special importance: medical care. Without clinics for emergencies, without provisions for pregnant women and children, families will not return. This would not, in the grand scheme of things, require much of an effort from the outside world. A half dozen mobile clinics that can later be converted into permanent installations, medicines, some volunteer doctors and nurses to get things started. Will that happen?

The usually intrepid Father A. is unsure. “We do feel abandoned,” he allows. Well, that’s not just an understatement and not just a feeling; that’s a hard fact. Batnaya, Telaskov, Turkaev, Bakova, who in the West has even heard these names? Yet these were flourishing Christian towns of thousands, the bedrock of Christian history. And these are the people who are holding the line, at immense cost, against the terrorism and the grandiose violent fantasies of an aggressive radical Islam.

Isn’t this the season when Christians remember Mary and Joseph, homeless, driven out? As I trudge through Batnaya, I can practically feel my long-slumbering Catholicism un-lapsing. I feel like showing up at midnight mass in Washington or Berlin, waving those pictures of Jesus with the ISIS boot marks on them that I salvaged from Batnaya, yelling at the startled congregation to wake up and pay attention because their brothers and sisters are in the direst peril. And this is not the time to eat cookies and light candles, it’s the time to take action. And that aside, we’re still left with the geopolitical aspect. Whether or not Christians will be able to stay in their homes in the Middle East isn’t just a question of religion, not just a question of keeping down the numbers of refugees by helping people stay in place; it’s a matter of what societal vision will win the day. Will it be the Kurdish vision of peaceful and friendly respect among neighbors, of a shared beloved homeland in which there is room for differences of belief and practice? Or will it increasingly be a region where others are dirt and disputes are solved by genocide?

Dr. Cheryl Benard was program director of the Initiative for Middle Eastern Youth and the Alternative Strategies Initiative within the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division. Her publications include Civil Democratic Islam, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, The Muslim World After 9-11, The Battle Behind the Wire - US Prisoner and Detainee Operations, and Eurojihad - Patterns of Islamist Radicalization and Terrorism in Europe. Civil Democratic Islam was one of the books found in Osama Bin Laden’s library during the raid on his compound.