Christian militias fighting to defeat ISIS in Iraq will work together to end the atrocities being committed by jihadists, it has been announced.
In a statement released on Monday, representatives from a number of Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac political parties said they would "unite the efforts of the military and security coordination in the Nineveh Plain areas in order to enable the people of the region to management the security file" [sic].
The statement also said the parties had agreed to "keep Nineveh Plain areas out of any future political conflicts, especially since the region and its inhabitants suffered greatly as a result of these conflicts that have no legitimacy among the dominant political forces".
The head of the Assyrian Patriotic Party, Emmanuel Khoshaba Youkhanna, who signed the document, told Breitbart News: "This is the first step to unify all our forces under one leadership."
He added that the unified militia wants official recognition from Baghdad.
Until now, only the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), an Assyrian militia, has been officially recognised and supported by the Iraqi government. Its soldiers were alongside the Iraqi special forces and Iraqi military when they liberated Qaraqosh — a majority Christian town near Mosul — almost two weeks ago.
NPU spokesperson Athra Kado told Christian Today earlier this week that liberating the Christian towns on the Nineveh Plain was "one of my life goals" since ISIS took over, and that his fellow soldiers are desperate to free the area from militant control.
"It [the Nineveh Plain, before ISIS] felt like the only place in the word that we were safe, but even that place was taken from us," he said. "Now, we're trying to get it back."
