Making Broken People Whole Again

Despite millennia of political turmoil and religious persecution, Christianity has maintained a continuous presence in Iraq that dates back almost 2000 years. Christian communities in Iraq were significantly diminished by the atrocities committed by the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate - an event that occurred within living memory. The consequences of the rise and fall of ISIS, for Iraqi Christians, are not only material but psychological also. The lingering traumas that are omnipresent among Iraq's Christian minority groups have become a massive but understated problem in the context of post-ISIS reconstruction and recovery efforts, and play a significant role in emigration-driven population collapse. This research article describes the problem of trauma among Iraqi Christians within a cultural and psychological context and analyzes its demographic and security-related implications.