Kurds' Prayer: God Has Final Word on Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq -- The war in Iraq has come to the home front for the Kurds as they try to navigate the stormy waters of the current Middle East crisis.

Since the military campaign by the terrorist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) began, more than 500,000 refugees have flooded into Kurdish Iraq. Now it's hit the Kurds on the road.

The war has created a severe gas shortage in Erbil. At about 2 p.m., the line of cars at one gas station stretched for about two miles. Some had been waiting in line since 3 a.m. When they finally got to the gas pump, they could only get 30 liters or about eight U.S. gallons.

It's a war the Kurds don't want.

"We are trying to keep away from this war, which right now is going on in Iraq," Mariwan Naqshbandi, with the Ministry of Religious Affairs, told CBN News. "The national issue is much more important for us. We don't want to be involved in this because the war is between Sunni and Shi'ite."

Many Kurds believe the current crisis means they have to chart their own course.

Heresh Stwne, a news anchor with Kurdistan TV, said Kurds no longer want to be part of Iraq.

"The best thing for us as Kurdish people, I think [is] we don't want to be with Iraq any more. We want to be separate from them. That's enough for us," Stwne told CBN News, adding that "99 percent of people in Kurdistan say these things."

"They say enough. We want to be alone," Stwne said.

With countries like Shi'ite Iran and Sunni Turkey and Saudi Arabia pitted against each other, the majority of Kurds fear the current crisis -- an Islamic civil war -- could escalate into a regional war.

While the turmoil has increased, a prayer movement has grown.

"In the last couple of weeks, there's been a rise of prayer meetings even just in the city," Fabian Grech with the Mesopotamia House of Prayer told CBN News. "And I get messages and calls this prayer is going to happen in this house. It's been happening even in homes."

"Even the local churches open their buildings for prayer in the morning, and it wasn't like that before. So we're seeking God's face for their country," he said, describing the prayers as "intensified, filled with faith and passion, big prayers."

"Each of us has a role to ask God, as we ask in the Lord's Prayer, let Your will be done in Heaven as it is in earth," Mahir Towfiq, with Life Agape, said.

Towfiq oversees a nationwide prayer network inside Iraq, which partners with an international prayer ministry.

"I just want to encourage our dear brothers and sisters around the world to continue to pray for our country…in spite of all the demographic changes, destruction, the wars and whatever's happening, God has the final word," he said.