A long time coming

WASHINGTON—After years of delays, persecuted religious minorities victimized by Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 in Iraq and Syria are set to get some relief from the U.S. government.

Congress last week unanimously passed The Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act, designed to provide aid to Christians, Yazidis, Shia Muslims, and other religious minorities that underwent displacement and genocide at the hands of ISIS.

When ISIS targeted religious minorities in a genocidal sweep through Iraq and Syria in 2014, the number of Christians in the regions fell from 1.4 million to less than 200,000. Of the 550,000 Yazidis in Iraq before ISIS, 280,000 remain displaced. On March 17, 2016, then–Secretary of State John Kerry recognized that the persecution inflicted by ISIS constituted genocide. Congress also unanimously declared that ISIS was committing genocide against religious and ethnic minorities.

But months passed, and the Obama administration’s relief efforts often overlooked those who needed it most. The genocide continued “to be an open sore that needs to be addressed,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., told me, adding that the relief effort was five years in the making.

After waiting in vain for administrative action, Smith decided in September 2016 to introduce a bill in Congress but it never gained traction. He visited Erbil, the Kurdistan region of Iraq in December 2016. There he met with Christians from decimated communities who had received little or no international aid. They asked him, “Why would the United States abandon us?”

Smith reintroduced the bill in 2017 with co-sponsor Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. It passed by a voice vote in the House in June of that year. But it hit gridlock in the Senate, where confusion and debate over its format kept it from passing out of committee.

Finally, the gridlock broke. The Senate approved the bill in October, and on Nov. 27 the House passed it, both unanimously.

“Why it took so long continues to bewilder me,” Smith said.

The act provides humanitarian aid to the victims and support for investigations to hold the perpetrators responsible for their crimes, while funneling funds directly to faith-based organizations that have already been working privately to ease the crisis on the ground. The measure also requires reports to Congress on the progress of assistance and the results of the investigations.

The act has drawn praise from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and a number of organizations fighting for religious freedom in the region, including Open Doors, the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, and the Knights of Columbus.

“The fact that this bill passed both the House and the Senate unanimously shows that the American response to genocide transcends partisanship and that there is enormous political will to protect and preserve religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians and Yazidis, who were targeted for extinction,” Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told the Catholic News Agency.

The support from the bill will allow displaced Christians and Yazidis to begin their return to their ancestral homes and rebuild, Smith said, adding, “They want to go back, but they want to go back safely, and in a way that will lead them to thriving again.”

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the act in the coming weeks.