It's 6:00 p.m.. Tonight in Erbil in Northern Iraq in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan
The sun is already getting low in the sky, but it's still nearly 40 degrees
It was 44 degrees Celsius the other day. It's hot here, but around is a thriving City
I don't know which there's more of minarets or construction cranes. It's like the whole city is being built at once
I'm told the City was bustling even before the isis attacks of
2014-2015 but now that that threat is subsiding the city is coming back as we see in to erbil a few days ago it was
Fascinating to see who else was in the plain and trying to guess what they were doing whether they were relief workers for some nGO
trying to provide humanitarian relief or
Investors and economic developers wanting a piece of the action as this city booms or maybe they were military
personnel in the private sector providing security for the country Now that so many western nations have decided
to formally pull their official troops out any way you slice it or Erbil is in the center of the action
it's the center of the political action - in this part of the country in a couple of months time in September there'll be a
referendum should
Kurdistan
Separate from Iraq and form its own Ethno nationalist state obviously
The Kurds believe in that but others in the region don't want it
They don't want to leave their territorial integrity they dont want to lose the resources they don't want to lose the military power
There's a lot of interests here
It's a country surrounded by the likes of Syria
Turkey and Iran all of whom have ethnic political and economic interests in the place
We're here because we're interested in one of those ethnicities a religion actually
Christianity there are seven different Christian churches in Iraq which seems like a lot especially when you realize that the Christian
population of this country is now maybe
1% it was much higher years ago, but wave after wave of
Christa Phobic genocide has driven some many of them out
the city of Erbil itself is home to thousands of Christians who fled from the so called nineveh plains as
isis rampage through Those towns
Threatening any Christians who didn't flee with forced conversion the Jizya which is a submissive tax
That Christians must pay to islam or of course the sword too many fell to the sword
many of those who go back to their own homes find that those homes are burnt out and
Even if they weren't what future would they really have for as isis recedes the next islamic threat presents whether it?
Whatever the name of it is this time around?
it's a sorrowful look around we're here at the ancient Citadel of
Erbil Which dates Back, Millennia
Predates Islam and Christianity even to the time of moses one of the oldest settled regions in the world
There was once a time when this neighborhood when this community was dominantly Christian
But the same could be said about egypt which is barely 10 percent coptic Christian now
There are a lot of Christians here who want to stay on the land stay in their ancient territory?
We want to support them. We want to help them with humanitarian relief
We want to keep them safe
but more and more I'm coming to the unhappy conclusion that there is no Christian future in the middle east simply demographics and
Politics and war are against it at least the israeli ethnic nationalist state in that
Small sliver of land the Jews are a majority they're economically and militarily able to fend for themselves
They have strong and vocal allies in the west most importantly the united states that can't be said for the Christians in these parts
they're scattered around a majority in no place other than perhaps this neighborhood in that town, they're
Demilitarized and when we asked them about whether or not they would take up arms
They say it's against their culture in their way of life. They have no allies even within christendom
I always see the pope talking about reaching out to Muslim refugees
It's very rare that I see the pope talking about his own Christian refugees refugees from a genocide. There is no muslim genocide
I'm worried about the Christians of this reason and over the course next week
We're going to explore their situation both in refugee camps and in towns, and in cities like erbil to which they fled
We're going to do journalism here as is this we're going to make a longer
formal documentary hosted by our own Faith goulding
We're also going to bring humanitarian relief you brought more than ten thousand dollars u.s.
Worth of food Staples with us to give out at Christian refugee camp sort of a downpayment on the larger purpose of our trip
Which is to raise 1 million dollars for more Christian relief there are literally billions of dollars earmarked
for muslim refugees from the region 4.7 billion from the un alone
But Christian refugees don't go to un refugee camps because they're persecuted and even killed in those places, too
They're ignored people
It's an ignored genocide, and we can't let it be ignored if you want to help us with our missions
Please do on the one hand we want to produce a world-class
Documentary suitable for distribution through a network like Netflix or the BBC
On the other hand we want to raise a million dollars and give it to the most effective least corrupt aid agency
We can find and we're going around
trying to
Visually audit who we can trust that if we gave them the money it would truly go into the hands of the needy Christians
If you want to help us with either these two projects which have separate bank accounts. You can learn about both of them at
save the Christians.com
I've enjoyed my time group my brief time so far in Iraq and erbil
It's safer than I thought it would be although there's checkpoints everywhere and signs vote not touching unexploded bombs
But there's an optimism here
There's an optimism even felt by the Christians that perhaps the worst of isis is over
But they've seen the end of a genocide a dozen times before only to be replaced with a new one
And I think that in the years ahead
Life for Christians will actually become harder as what little attention was paid to them over the last Few years
dissipates and goes
Elsewhere if you want to learn more about our trip to Iraq to save the Christians
Visit savetheChristians com ..What am I doing in Iraq?
I'm here to learn about the fate of the Christians of this region one of the oldest Christian communities in the world if you want
To learn more about our journey and help us to our documentary and our humanitarian work, go to savetheChristians.com