UN Security Council condemns persecution of Christians in Iraq

                  
The United Nations Security Council condemned the militant persecution of Christians and other minorities in Iraq, stating that such actions may be considered as crimes against humanity.        

In a unanimous declaration adopted late Monday, the Council’s 15 member countries denounced “in the strongest terms the systematic persecution of individuals from minority populations and those who refuse its extremist ideology in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other associated armed groups.”          

The Security Council also called on the Iraqi cabinet and the United Nations to intensify their efforts to serve the “urgent” humanitarian needs of people displaced by the conflict and to tackle the “terrorist threat” against minorities.        

More than 400 Iraqis fled their hometown Tel Afar, in Mosul province, on Tuesday, amid continuing fears of sectarian violence in the area.              

The conflict erupted after Islamic militants captured Iraq's second largest city Mosul last month, imposing Shariah law.                 

Government authorities and local people have provided the refugees with aid, including food and air conditioning units.                

The Islamic State, which last month declared a “caliphate” straddling large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria, has threatened a Christian presence in the region spanning close to two millennia.            

Over the weekend, hundreds of families fled Mosul, a once-cosmopolitan city that is the country’s second largest.
 
Using its own version of "soft" and "hard" power, the Islamic State is crushing resistance across northern Iraq so successfully that its promise to march on Baghdad may no longer be unrealistic bravado.                

While conventional states try to win hearts and minds abroad before necessarily resorting to military force, the jihadist group is also achieving its aims by psychological means - backed up by a reputation for extreme violence.                

The Islamic State, which in June captured a vast stretch of territory in the north including the largest city Mosul, used this strategy when its fighters met armed resistance from the town of al-Alam for 13 days running.               

They kidnapped 30 local families and rang up the town's most influential citizens with a simple message about the hostages: "You know their destiny if you don't let us take over the town."            

Within hours, tribesmen and local leaders caved in to save the families. The black flag of the Sunni militants, who are bent on overthrowing the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, was soon flying over government buildings and police stations in al-Alam.              

Weeks later, only a few masked gunmen guard checkpoints surrounding al-Alam at night, so comfortable is the Islamic State in its control through fear.            

"One hundred percent of people are angry that the Islamic State is here but there is nothing we can do," said a scared resident who spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity.            

Similar accounts of victories by the Islamic State, which has also seized territory in neighboring Syria during the civil war there, are repeated across other towns and villages in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad.                

Hostility to the jihadis in some of the majority Sunni areas - where from 2006 to 2008 local people fought al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State's predecessor - has not stopped them from taking and holding territory.             

Breaking the will of local populations has allowed the relatively small force to surge south, focusing their fight most recently on battlefields just 70 km (45 miles) from Baghdad.             

The fighters have boosted their arms and equipment along the way, making the seizure of weapons and vehicles a condition of deals struck with communities they have coerced into submission.