Nineveh Plains

Overview

The Nineveh Plains is a belt of farming towns and villages northeast of Mosul in northern Iraq. Most of the plains lies in Nineveh province, a federally administered governorate headquartered in Mosul. The region is a historic homeland of the Assyrian people and a center of Iraqi Christian life. Its communities also include Yazidis, Kurds, Arabs and Shabak. For the Shabak, the plains is their only homeland. The Islamic State seized the area in 2014 and carried out a genocidal campaign against its minorities. Although Iraqi and allied forces later expelled the group, damaged homes and competing armed forces prevented many displaced families from returning.

Geography

The plains stretches across Mosul’s northeastern approaches. Qaraqosh, also known as Bakhdida, is among its best-known Christian towns; Tal Asqaf, Tal Kayf, Bashiqa and Bartella are others. Ancient Christian towns and farming communities stand alongside Arab settlements and Yazidi, Kurdish and Shabak communities. These neighboring populations have shared roads, markets and agricultural land, while differing political and security affiliations have shaped control of the area. The route between Mosul and Erbil is especially important for travel and trade.

Ancient and biblical history

The region takes its name from ancient Nineveh, the Assyrian city near present-day Mosul. Mosul and the surrounding plains form part of the historic homeland of Assyrian Christians. The continuity of Christian towns gives the region importance beyond its strategic position beside Mosul: their survival preserves communities rooted in this part of Mesopotamia over many centuries.

Jewish history

The Nineveh Plains also has a documented connection to Iraqi Jewish life. In December 2019, Jews from the Kurdistan Region and abroad gathered in Al-Qosh, a town in the plains, to celebrate Hanukkah. The gathering linked the area to the wider history of Jews in Iraq.

Modern history

Violence elsewhere helped shape the plains’ Christian population. Massacres of Christians by Turkish and Kurdish forces during the Ottoman Empire drove survivors toward safer areas, including the Nineveh Plains. Before the Islamic State’s offensive, federal Iraq supplied police in the region, while Kurdish security forces exercised effective control over many Christian areas through intelligence personnel, Kurdish-paid Christian forces and a largely Kurdish Iraqi army garrison. The 1,500-member Nineveh Plains Guards operated as a Kurdish proxy force connected to the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council. Shabak communities were generally excluded from Kurdish protection and faced repeated Islamic State attacks.

In June 2014, the Islamic State attacked Mosul. Iraqi divisions assigned to defend the city and surrounding plains collapsed, and Mosul fell in about 48 hours. The group ordered Christians in Mosul to convert, pay jizya, flee or die. Its offensive soon engulfed the Nineveh Plains, where it established full control in August 2014. Qaraqosh, Tal Asqaf, Tal Kayf, Bashiqa and Bartella remained under its control for approximately 27 months. The Islamic State drove about 120,000 Christians from the plains and pursued a genocidal campaign against minority communities, including Christians and Yazidis.

Iraqi forces and the U.S.-backed coalition began the campaign to liberate Mosul through the Nineveh Plains in October 2016. Peshmerga fighters helped secure initial gains before Iraqi federal forces attacked Mosul’s suburbs. Displaced residents sheltered in camps in the Kurdistan Region. Seven months after liberation, the plains remained largely depopulated. An assessment counted 90,000 people still displaced from a pre-2014 population of 120,000 in the communities it examined. Another found that 41 percent of displaced Christians wanted to return, while only 3,365 had returned home at the time of the assessment.

Security

Liberation left control divided among Iraqi government forces, Kurdish forces and local Christian and Shabak militias. Peshmerga leaders announced that their forces would remain after Mosul’s liberation. Four principal Christian security forces operated in the area: the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, Nineveh Plains Forces, Dwekh Nawsha and Babylon Brigades. Dwekh Nawsha was connected to the Assyrian Patriotic Party and concentrated in the northern plains. These forces had different political affiliations and relationships with larger Iraqi or Kurdish institutions. Their presence did not provide a single, locally trusted security authority for returning families.

The Popular Mobilization Forces came to dominate much of the plains after the Islamic State’s defeat. Its Shabak 30th Brigade, also called Liwa al-Shabak, numbered about 1,000 to 1,500 fighters in 2019 and established headquarters in the depopulated Christian town of Bartella. Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq also opened an office there. Residents reported militia images of Qais al-Khazali, Ali Khamenei and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis displayed on local shops. Armed groups controlled checkpoints, reconstruction contracts and traffic along the Mosul–Erbil trade corridor, giving them influence over both daily movement and the rebuilding economy.

The approximately 1,000-strong Babylon Brigades, the Popular Mobilization Forces’ 50th Brigade, presented themselves as a Christian force but included many recruits from outside the Nineveh Plains, including non-Christians from Baghdad’s Sadr City, Muthanna and Dhi Qar. Iran-aligned Shiite factions backed their founder, Rayan al-Kildani, giving Iranian influence a nominally Christian vehicle in the region. Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako publicly opposed the brigades’ attempted expansion. Their presence deterred displaced residents from returning to the northern plains. In 2019, the United States sanctioned al-Kildani for torture and looting Christian homes in Batnaya. It also sanctioned Waad Qado, leader of the 30th Brigade, for extortion, kidnapping and illegal arrests.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi began efforts on July 15, 2017, to bring militias in the newly liberated plains under government control. His executive order 1388, issued on August 2, 2018, required Popular Mobilization Forces units to leave Mosul and the Nineveh Plains and placed forces in Nineveh under the operational and administrative control of the army-led Nineveh Operations Command. Prime Minister Adel Abd’al-Mahdi reiterated the order in March 2019. By July 2019, the required withdrawal and transfer of command had not occurred. The continued autonomy of the 30th and 50th brigades impeded secure return and tested the government’s ability to enforce command over armed units on its payroll.

Present day

Expelling the Islamic State did not restore Christian communities. Fear of renewed attacks, distrust of Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, militia coercion and lost livelihoods continued to discourage return. Aid to the Church in Need estimated that 12,970 homes in the Nineveh Plains needed rebuilding, at a cost exceeding $200 million. Militias seized land in Batnaya, Tel Keppe and Bakhdida through forged deeds, intimidation of registries and squatting. When Pope Francis visited Qaraqosh in 2021, only about half its displaced Christian residents had returned. A survey found that 57 percent of Nineveh Christians had considered emigration and 36 percent expected to leave within five years. In 2019, the plains and the Kurdistan Region still contained Iraq’s largest remaining Christian population, including members of several denominations such as the Syriac Orthodox Church.

The Islamic State’s campaign renewed proposals for local self-government to preserve minority communities. One proposal envisaged a province for Christians in the Nineveh Plains, one for Yazidis in Sinjar and one for Turkmens in Tel Afar. As Mosul’s liberation approached, Iraqis also debated whether Nineveh province should become a region containing new provinces. Prime Minister Abadi had warned in April 2015 that Iraq would disintegrate without decentralization. Supporters argued that locally accountable administration and protection could help families rebuild and maintain their historic communities. Those aims depend on secure roads, enforceable property rights, reconstruction and armed forces subject to state command.

In March 2026, attacks on Popular Mobilization Forces positions around Mosul underscored the region’s continuing security concerns. A strike was reported in the Nineveh Plains on March 10, following a strike near Mosul on March 9. Responsibility for the strikes remained unclaimed.