From Nightmare to Revival - The story of Tel Esqof!

Tel Esqof or Tesqopa – a Ghost-town returns to life!

Fanatic islamaistic djihadists or the peaceful “people of the cross” - what do you think who will persist? No, I don´t give you an answer. I will not even give you a suggestion for an answer. I just ask this question to you, before I will tell you the story of Tel Esqof…

Tesqopa or Tel Esqof, a village that had about 11.000 (some say its been 15.000) Christian inhabitants, is located in the Ninive-plains about 30 km north of Mosul. In the beginning of August 2014 Tel Esqof was taken and held for some days by ISIS terrorists when they conquered the Ninive-plains. 

From the day before ISIS came onwards, Tel Esqof had no more inhabitants, as (thanks to God) all the inhabitants had been able to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan before ISIS arrived. The Islamists of ISIS held Tel Esqof for about two weeks – it was a relative short time, so they did not cause immense destructions, also they destroyed the crosses of the churches and religious items. 

 On August 17^th 2014 Tel Esqof was taken by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Some sources say, the Islamists just left without any fighting and withdrew to a line about 2 kilometers from Tel Esqof, other sources say, the Peshmerga have been fighting them out. I don´t know. Anyway, Tel Esqof suffered almost no damage during August 2014.

From that time on, the Peshmerga stationed their troops in some of the houses while most of the village turned into being a ghost town. Sometimes some people had the occasion to visit the village and look for their houses or bury their dead on the cemetery. The frontline was too close, so it was too dangerous to return.

On May 3^rd 2016, ISIS returned to Tel Esqof for some hours after they Islamist terrorists attacked Tel Esqof in the early morning with a surprise attack performed with the help of 8 explosive-filled bombing cars. After an intensive battle the Peshmerga retook control in the evening of that day. The battle left more than 100 killed ISIS-Islamists, about 20 dead Peshmerga behind. There also was one US Navy-Seal shot by the Islamists. A lot of Houses were destroyed that day by the exploding bombing cars and airstrikes by the US-led coalition forces.

During the operations to liberate Mosul and the Ninive-plains, the Peshmerga and other militia, among them fighters of the Ninive Plain Protection Units (NPU), batteled ISIS back towards Mosul, liberating first the neighbour village of Batnaya and later also Tel Kef. Immediately after ISIS was fought back, the preparations for the resettling of displaced inhabitants of Tel Esqof started.

At the end of January 2017, the first 12 families were able to return to their houses in Tel Esqof. These houses had been prepared by the chaldean-catholic diocese of Alqosh with help from different organisations.

Now, in mid-February, its 30 families that live in Tel Esqof – and it will be more with each week passing. 

The flags of ISIS, the graffiti and inscriptions they left – all this is gone. But the people of Tel Esqof (the returned ones as well as those still waiting for return) erected a large cross on the ancient hill besides the village. It is more than 10 meters high and it is enlighted in the night, such giving an answer to the question I asked in the beginning!

On February 18^th, 2017, His Beatitude Louis Raphaël I Sako, patriarch of the chaldean-catholic church and H.E. Mikha Pola Maqdassi, chaldean-catholic bishop of Alqosh come to Tel Esqof and celebrated the first Holy Mass in the towns Mar Georgis church after more than two and a half years, in concelebration with H.E. bishop Manfred Scheuer of Linz, Austria, who joined that event with a delegation from Austria. The church was filled with hundreds of believers. After the blessing, they all went to the hill, where the large cross was blessed and inaugurated.

Over the centuries, the Christians of the Orient suffered a lot of persecution, they were enslaved or killed, their women raped and sold and more than one time they have been close to extinction. But out of the blood of the martyrs Christianity was revived again and again.

You, who reads that article: Please pray for the people of Tel Esqof and all the suffering and persecuted Christians in the Middle East and worldwide! God will bless you for that!

Heating Oil for the Poor

Heating Oil for the Poor

Or: A little bit is at least better than noting...

 Iraq is one of the countries with the largest oil-reserves worldwide - but otherwise thousands of IDPs in Iraq even don´t have any heating oil to get a warmed up shelter during cold and rainy winter days and nights.

Just a few hours before leaving Iraq once again and travelling back to Germany, i made - knowing, that it would only be a very, very small gesture - the spontaneous decision to do what i was able to do and invest 150 $ to provide heating oil to at least some families.

I was thinking about some yazidi families that have to spend already the third winter in simple tents and windy shelters, as they did not find place in orgenized camps.

But it should turn out very soon, that this plan was absoultely unpracticable. A friend told me: If you are going to deliver heating oil to ten families in a place, where 100 families live, this will cause a lot of tensions among the people there. So better wait until you will be able to provide oil ta all the families there and give the ten bottles of oil to poor people in another place, where it will cause less tensions.

The oil was ordered, there were only some hours before I had to leave and go to the airport… So I asked myself, what to do now?

Of course, I had been offered to cancel the ordered oil, but that was not, what I intended to do, as then noone would have any help. So I finally decided to distribute the 10 bottles, each filled with 22 liters of heating oil, to poor IDP families in Alqosh.

The first stop was a former school building in the center of Alqosh´s old town, where six extremely poor IDP families live. Some days before I had visited them for the first time with the members of a local NGO that were distributing some Christmas gifts to them, so I knew, how needy they are. And I was quite shocked, when members of that families told me, that during more than two years they had not been supplied with heating oil from anyone – a sentence I should hear repeatedly on that Dec. 30 of 2016.

Its just too many IDP families that are depending for 100% on help from outside, as they have nothing (they lost everything, when they had to flee ISIS in 2014) and also have no chance for earning an income. Of course, especially the churches and many organisations d a lot of great work in supporting those people. But they can´t cover all the needs, that´s the problem.

So it is especially old and sick people, that suffer during winter time, as their health gets worse and their situation turns from bad to more bad with every month passing by…

It was only a small help – but I know, I have been able to bring at least a little bit of joy to some of those people (also I know that 22 liters of heating oils are only enough to provide warmth for some few hours). But I hope, on my next visit I will be able to refill the bottles (we asked them to give them back for refillment) and maybe, with the help of other people, be also able to provide more suffering people with heating oil.

Did i end up in Havanna?

I´m walking around „Armenia“, the street that is connecting Beirut´s „Martyr Square“ with Burj Hamoud, the Armenian quarter of Beirut. In a past time, the area around „Armenia“ – the harbour-quarter, must have been one oft he reasons, why they called Beirut „the Paris of the Middle East“.

But the French charme has passed away long time ago, during the civil war that destroyed not only the people, but also the substance of Lebanon. If there weren´t the quite new cars, one could get the imagination of walking somewhere in Havanna, Cuba. I´ve never been there, but the morbidity reminds me of all the pictures i have seen from there.

It´s lost glamour. Mixed up with some charme that is still alive – but destined to finally pass away. Maybe one day, they will revive some of Havanna´s charme. But the old charme if Beirut will come to an end. The colonizers oft he 21st century seem to have different playgrounds than those of the 19th and 20th. And the investors of the 3rd milennium are rich, but heartless. Their cities are cold as ice and built of concrete, glass and steel. They are not allowed to have something like a soul.

October 8, 2016

Falafel & Chai: Maher

Peshmerga, Muslims, Yazidi, Christians, old and young people:
They all come to buy some of Mahers Falafel.

And its mostly IDPs from the Ninive-plains, that are sitting in the shade in front of his small shop and drink some chai...

Maher lives in Bandawaia, a small christian village just nearby to Alqosh. His small Falafel bar in just in the center of Alqosh. I will miss my daily visit there when i will leave Alqosh. I like sitting there, drinking a cup of Chai, looking at the streetlife - and just waiting whom you meet.

Every day its different, sometimes its nice surprises...

2016/09/26

They love the cross - "Cross Day" celebrations in Alqosh

In Alqosh - like everywhere in the Middle East, the celebrations of "Cross Day" (exsaltation of the Holy Cross) start in the evening before with processions, the lighting of bonfires and a lot of fireworks.

The additional speciality of Alqosh is surely the large cross in the mountains above the village. They prepared it well, as you will see.

The feast day itself, the reliqs of the Holy Cross are venerated (as they are venerated worldwide by the faithful).

Forming the procession towards the mountain

the square in front of old Mar Micha church

I just love this - you can only find it in Alqosh, nowhere else

forming up...

the procession climbs up the mountain, praying and singing...

Alqosh: Mar Micha church, Mar Georgis church and the cemetry in the background

Abuna Ghazwan lighting the bonfire

the large cross in the mountain above Alqosh

the highlight of the evening

fireworks in the mountains and down in the village

Abuna Ghazwan presenting the relic of the Holy Cross

Procession with the relic of the Holy Cross in the churchyard of Mar Georgis

veneration of the Holy Cross

God called him through the blood of the martyrs - the story of a 3rd millennium vocation in Iraq

God called him through the blood of the martyrs

Abuna Martin banni after his ordination, Sept. 9, 2016

 Some years ago a young man from Qaramles, a small town in the Nineva-plains, nearby to Mosul, decided to follow God´s call and become a priest.

It´s been an unusual step for a young man of 18 who lives in Iraq, a country, where Christins have been diminuished towards being a small minority oft he population. At the time the young man made his decision, in end of 2009, beginning 2010, hundreds of thousands of Christians had already left Iraq and emigrated to Europe, the US or Canada, searching for a better life there.

Far too many oft hem had been violated, abducted, threatened and murdered – and the number of martyred Christians that were killed only because of their faith had been rapidly increasing since Al-Kaida had started operating in Iraq in 2003.

A´buna Martin in the square of Qaramles IDP camp

At the time Martin, that young man, decided to follow God´s call to priesthood, i knew nothing about Christians in Iraq. I was knowing nothing about Iraq at all… Well, of course, i had heard of Ninive in the holy Bible. But for me that was very far away past. Euphrates, Tigris, Mesopotamia… so far, far away back in ancient times. And Iraq: well, i knew there were Saddam Hussein, Baath party – and war. A lot of war and destruction. Just far away, so far away, that it was absolutely out of my interest.

I think Martin lived like all the boys of his age, when he was growing up in Qaramles, an assyrian christian village quite near to Mosul, near the Tigris river. Visiting catechetic lessons, learning Syriac, the old language oft he church and how to sing the liturgical chants. And sure he joind the liturgic service. And  somewhen it happened that a special relation with Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul started.

Martin tells me that the day after he was ordained priest, when i visited him at „Qaramles IDP-Camp“ in Ankawa, as were standing in the large square oft he camp, near the large banner depicting Archbishop Paulus Faraj Rahho. „My bishop“, he says, „was again and again asking me, when i will be entering the seminary, when i was in an age of 15, 16.“ It looks like the archbishop had realized something. Had realized, that there was a boy with a special vocation within the youth of his diocese.

The poster depicting Fr. Ragheed Ganni and Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho

At that time Martin used to hear that repeated question, but he could not imagine to really become a priest. Then, on 3rd of June 2007, the chaldean priest Fr. Ragheed Ganni and three deacons were shot by Al-Kaidas terrorists in Mosul. It was a shocking incident, that was surely more frightening, than encouraging for Martin, when he was considering about what was the right way for him to go.

Some month later, in the last days of February 2008, archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped by Al-Kaida. His three guards were shot. The corpse oft he archbishop was found weeks later in the trunk of a car. He had been warned and threatened, but he stood up for his faith. And he became a martyr for Jesus Christ. The martyrium of archbishop Rahho was the turning point for Martin. He remembered his questions, asking him „Martin, when will you entert he seminary?“ And now he knew: YES, God called him – it was loud and clear – he had to become priest. So he entered the seminary.

When the terrorists oft he Islamic State stormed the Ninive-plains in August 2014 and came towards Qaramles, Martin was there, as he visited his family. It was holidays, the time oft he great summer heat, when temperatures us to rise up to 50° Celsius or more. The inhabitants of Qaramles fled in a hurry, had no time to take anything with them, just the clothes they wore, to get into security. Nobody was thinking about the church and Jesus being thzere in the tabernacle.

It was Martin, the young seminarist, who went tot he church, bringing himself into great danger, opened the tabernacle, took the most Holy Sacrament out and brought it to Ankawa to prevent it from desecration by the islamists…

Martin on the way to spend out Holy Communion during the ordiantion mass

That deed pointed out the determination, still (or even more) visible today in Martins speech and actions. You feel it, you realize it, when he stands there in the large square oft he IDP-camp, surrounded by children, saying: Please, pray, that Mosul and the Ninive-Plains will soon be liberated, as we want to go back to Mosul and the Ninive-plains. They are our home and destination!“

Martin Banni, chaldean Christian, lives in an IDP-camp in Ankawa, Iraq. September 9th 2016 he was ordained pries in Ankawa by Patriarc Louis Raphael Sako. He is a living testimony showing the fruits the suffering and persecuted martyrs-church of Iraq is bearing.

Yesterday, September 22nd 2016, Martin Banni celebrated his 25th birthday. May God bless him!

Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako ordaining Martin Banni and Awakem Isleiwa

New ordained priests Martin banni and Awakem Isleiwa

The author with Abuna Martin Banni

Abuna Martin: Under the cross, surrounded by children...

Teresa from Tel Esqof - will she ever return home?

It depends on the sun, where Teresa is sitting. Every day she sits outside of the refuge, she and her family found in Alqosh after they had to flee from ISIS in 2014.

While she sits there she is sewing traditional clothes of Tel Esqof, her hometown. Tel Esqof is now a ghost-town. Only Peshmerga and a command of NPU is living there. Many of the intact houses have been destroyed during the massive attack ISIS performed the 3rd of May 2016.

Teresa Daoud Ishak is 80 years old. Will she ever be able to return home?