"It's very organised, there is no improvisation."
That's how Father Patrick Desbois described the "very special" strategy being used by the Islamic State (ISIS) to wipe out Christianity in the areas it has occupied.
The Paris-based priest is a professor at Georgetown University who has been helping Christians, Yazidis and other victims of the ISIS-led genocide in Iraq and Syria through his Yahad–In Unum global humanitarian organisation.
Speaking to The Christian Post, Desbois said basically the ISIS strategy consists of separating members of families in the land the militants have occupied, taking newborn babies and virgin girls, killing fathers and forcing young boys to plant bombs on the streets.
"They dislocate the families, they take the newborn babies, and they put them in Islamist families," Desbois said, adding that young children are trained as terrorists and "forced to put bombs" on streets.
"The young girls who are virgins are selected by doctors and sold," he said, referring to the ISIS' human trafficking and sex trade networks.
Desbois said adult males are often shot in pits, their bodies dumped in mass graves.
The priest said hundreds of thousands of Christians have left their ancestral homelands across Iraq and Syria, noting that "there are nearly no more Christians" in the areas controlled by ISIS, except those held as prisoners.
He said aside from killing and breaking off Christian families, ISIS is also destroying all signs of Christianity. "Any Christian symbol is being erased," Desbois said, with Christians losing their houses, belongings, and everything else. This leads to the "total destruction" of the faith group in ISIS-ruled areas, he said.
Desbois, who recently released his book "The Fabric of Terrorists: Into the Secrets of Daesh," shared eye-witness accounts on how ISIS is using girls and other civilians as human shields in its attempts to hold on to Mosul amid the ongoing campaign by the Iraqi army and other coalition forces to liberate the city.
The priest called on Christians worldwide to help their fellow believers in the Middle East, saying they "have a responsibility to help" refugee families that are fleeing the war zones.
He also called on government and civic organisations to help victims find work, and also those who have been traumatised by forced conversions to Islam.
Christians can help in many different ways, with one option being donating to organisations that are working hard to assist survivors of the ISIS genocide, he said.
"We try to help concretely," Desbois said, reminding Christians that in the Bible, God asks people to help their brothers and sisters.
