GEORGE CAREY, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has had a busy week. Before flying off to Davos to network with business leaders, he launched a campaign called "Save the Assyrians" in a Westminster committee room. The aim of the campaign is to put pressure on the British government to make sure that Iraq's Assyrians are protected when the country's new constitution is drawn up. Mr Carey's intervention will undoubtedly help their cause. But the Assyrians already have two advantages over other lobbyists. First, they have a record of service in Britain's armed forces. Second, as oppressed representatives of the oldest Christian church, who still conduct services in Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus), they have unrivalled romantic appeal.

Assyrians in Britain have, until now, chiefly been noted for their ability to understand Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" without the help of subtitles. They have also shown their prowess as football referees in the Middlesex amateur league, according to Stephen Pound, MP for the leafy Ealing district of west London where most of Britain's 8,000-strong diaspora live. Some came in the 1940s and 1950s, and they were then joined by a second wave after the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s.

While this group is small by international standards--Brazil is home to about 80,000 and there are 20,000 in the Netherlands--many either fought, or have family members who fought, alongside the British in the second world war (the Assyrian Levies even had their own parachute squadron). Andy Darmoo, who runs a lighting business when he is not campaigning for Assyrian rights, says that most of the people who pass through the Assyrian centre in London have some relationship with the armed forces. His father, for example, spent 31 years in the Royal Air Force.

"The British have to help us, because we served with them," says the Rev Stephen Yalda Turkhan, priest at the Assyrian Church of the East. Mr Darmoo says this must be done delicately, though. Assyrian Christians have already been targeted by insurgents in Iraq: two churches were blown up in December. Any sign of favouritism from the co-religionist occupying powers could backfire. "We do not try to make trouble for any people, for any neighbours," says Mr Yalda Turkhan.

Old alliances aside, there are other reasons why the Brits ought to intervene on behalf of the Assyrians. After all, they have them to thank for perhaps the most beautiful objects in the British Museum, the 2,600-year-old bas-reliefs of lion hunts from King Ashurbanipal's palace. The Assyrians reckon the rent on them is now due.

The Economist