Death and sickness are taking hold of the children and elderly people among the thousands of refugee families spread over the Kurdistan Region who lost everything in the recent tragic developments while the ISIS Militants are still advancing and the humanitarian aid is insufficient.

There are seventy thousand displaced Christians in Ankawa [Erbil] along with the other minorities in this city. In Dohuk, the number of Christian refugees amount to more than 60,000 and their situation is worse than those in Erbil. While the humanitarian needs are escalating: housing, food, water, medicine and funds, the lack of international coordination is slowing and limiting the realization of an effective assistance to these thousands awaiting immediate support.

To summarize the situation: the churches are deserted and desecrated; five bishops are out of their bishoprics, the priests and nuns left their missions and institutions leaving everything behind, the families have fled with their children abandoning everything else! The level of disaster is extreme.

During this long period, four of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, all nations with large Christian majorities at least nominally, could not propose a single resolution creating a safe haven for minorities in Iraq and enforcing its protection. Two of these nations, we must always remember - the United States and the United Kingdom - are primarily responsible for the current state of affairs in Iraq. The current abandonment of the Christians of Iraq by the very powers that created this situation is something so monstrous it cannot be measured.

The advance of the Islamic terrorist forces of ISIS is so successful we know that it is excellently premeditated and planned. The international silence of governments and media is so scandalous the only conclusion we can reasonably reach is that these powers that be, these accomplices, wanted this Christian genocide to happen, this ethno-religious cleansing of almost unprecedented proportions. The Islamic blitzkrieg is facilitated by many in the region, including many immediate neighbours, and the West has become an accomplice of its successes. We shudder to think of the consequences of this dereliction of duty: let us not kid ourselves, our divine punishment for this will come: "a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty." (Wisdom, 6:7). Syrian and Iraqi Christians are us. They are us. By leaving them behind, we are digging our own graves.

As Maronite Catholic Amine Gemayel, former president of Lebanon, said decades ago: "If we don't stop them here, they will one day expel the Christians from all the Middle East. One day, they will be at your gates, in Europe." In Europe, and beyond.