Rebuilding the economy is a primary goal if Iraq is to become a successful country.

In the town of Qaraqosh on the Nineveh plains, agriculture and farming are the main sources of living. The area was renowned in Iraq for it’s many chicken farms with modern facilities, ISIS destroyed all of these facilities when they captured the town and surrounding areas in August 2014. SWIC is helping local farmers rebuild these facilities and we need your help.

Some background on Qaraqosh: The vast majority of its inhabitants are ethnic Assyrians, more than 70% of whom are members of the Syriac Catholic Church, while the rest are Syriac Orthodox. The recent wave of violence targeting Christians in Iraq forced many Assyrians living in major Iraqi cities to move to Assyrian towns in the Nineveh Plains, which swelled the town with an influx of refugees mainly belonging to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
At the beginning of July 2014, ISIS forces attempted to occupy the city. The Kurdish Peshmerga and the Assyrian Qaraqosh Protection Committee successfully defended it, while elders, women, and children fled to neighboring towns, thus joining other Christian refugees from nearby Mosul that had previously escaped the city in fear of the extremists.[21] The Islamists proceeded to cut off the town’s water supply. This, together with the rise in the price of oil following ISIS’ invasion of nearby oil field and an embargo imposed by ISIS forcing nearby Muslim villages to stop trade with Qaraqosh, rendered life difficult in the town also burdened with incoming refugees. On 6 August 2014, the Kurdish troops withdrew from the city and the next day Islamists from ISIS invaded the city.[23] Much of the population, including recent arrivals, was left joining the 150,000 Assyrians fleeing, though they were forced to walk towards Erbil without their cars and possessions as Kurdish forces feared Islamist infiltration.

All of its citizens fled to Iraqi Kurdistan after the ISIS invasion on August 6, 2014. The town was under control of ISIS until October 19, 2016 when it was liberated as part of the Battle of Mosul.

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