The Assyrians are the indigenous people of the Nineveh Plains, Mesopotamia (Northern Iraq).  They turned to the God of the Bible at the preaching of Jonah and accepted Jesus as Lord after hearing of his resurrection. The Assyrian Church of the East was founded in AD 33 and the nation that was once a great military empire became a great missionary one.

Arab Muslim armies invaded and conquered Mesopotamia in AD 630 and subjugated the Assyrians. Muslim Kurds swept into Upper Mesopotamia from Turkey in AD 1261, driving Assyrians from their homes and massacring multitudes. The Muslim Mongol invasion in AD 1300 almost eliminated the traumatised Assyrian population, but as always a remnant survived.

The Assyrians fought for the Allies in World War One and were promised autonomy in their homeland upon victory. In an act of appalling betrayal, that promise was never fulfilled. Instead, when the British mandate was lifted in 1932, the Assyrians were abandoned and the Kurds and Turks extracted revenge. Two-thirds of the Assyrian population died in the massacres of 1933.  The remnant, after surviving the Arab-Nazi alliance of World War Two, then watched as Arab Muslim anti-Semitic pogroms culminated in the expulsion and eradication of Iraq's sizable Jewish community in the early 1950s.

Today, amidst escalating intolerant Islamic fundamentalism, sectarian conflict and lawlessness, the Assyrians, other Christians and religious minorities are being systematically terrorised, killed and driven from Iraq.

Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, ethnic-religious nationalists and al-Qaeda-linked militants have all been targeting Christians who, like the Jews before them, are usually more educated, entrepreneurial, globally minded and wealthy. Because the Islamic system does not allow dhimmis (Christians and Jews under Islamic rule) to be armed or give testimony against Muslims in court, Muslim thugs and criminals target Christians for rape, cruelty, robbery and extortion. Islamic fundamentalists are rigorously targeting everything deemed 'un-Islamic'. Churches have been destroyed, crosses have been systematically removed and priests and other church leaders have been murdered. Christian families have been threatened with the historic Islamic ultimatum: convert to Islam, flee empty handed, pay jizya ('protection' money), or die.

Around half the Christian community has fled. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christian refugees now live in severe stress in Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Most of the Christians remaining in Iraq live as Internally Displaced Peoples in the north, having been driven from their homes in the conflict zones of central and southern Iraq. But Christians are not secure in Northern Iraq either and are increasingly the targets of terror attacks. Furthermore, a war in North Iraq – Turkey vs Kurds, Arabs vs Kurds, al-Qaeda vs everyone – is looming over Kurdish separatist aspirations and the status of oil-rich Kirkuk.

Contrary to simplistic thinking, the seriously fracturing Sunni-Shia religious fault-line does not lie at the Iran-Iraq border but runs through Iraq, through Baghdad. The present multi-faceted war –  Sunnis vs Shiites, and jihadists vs nationalists vs separatists vs ethnic minorities vs infidels –  has been almost inevitable since the Iranian Shiite revolution of 1979 and probably since borders were drawn and dictators installed after World War One.

All this means the Christians are very vulnerable as they are targeted by everyone everywhere. Despite this, most Western states refuse to change their immigration policy from one of non-discrimination (stand in the queue – first in, first served) to one of giving priority to those most needy.

The Christian Assyrians are facing genocide and expulsion from their historic homeland. Yet Isaiah prophesies that one day people will move freely between Egypt, Israel and Assyria, not only because of peace, but because they will worship the same Almighty God of the Bible (Isaiah 19:21-23). Only the Sovereign Almighty Creator God of love and justice can do this. And so we pray for God to protect, preserve and build his Church (Matthew 16:18), still the turmoil of the nations (Psalm 65:5-7) and fulfil his promises (Hebrews 10:23).