If a majority of the population in a country, where people with red hair are a minority, votes for a law that forces all people with red h! air to l et themselves be enslaved or be beheaded, is that democracy? This is a good allegory for what Iraqi democracy today means for the Assyrians.

The sectarian violence and the general chaos in Iraq affects all Iraqis, regardless of their ethnicity. But the Christian Assyrians suffer the most, because they are Assyrians and Christians. They are Christians in Iraq where Islamic extremism, both Sunni and Shiite, is increasing every day. Besides the sectarian persecution which the Assyrians are subjected to, the KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party) led KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) is systematically persecuting and oppressing the Assyrians, which are the indigenous people of Iraq. The purpose of the actions of the KRG is the Kurdish nationalist ambition to take over all historically Assyrian territory in northern Iraq. The Assyrians lack protection in today's Iraq and suffer non-proportionally, something that is affirmed by the fact that 40% of all Iraqi refugees are Christians, although their numbers only constitute 5% of the Iraqi population.

The Assyrians will never be able to live in peace, liberty and security as equal citizens in Iraq, not among Arabs nor Kurds. The oppression will continue until the last Assyrians have fled the country. The only way to prevent Iraq from being entirely drained of its indigenous people is to give the Assyrians the possibility to create an own autonomous region on the Nineveh plains, the historically Assyrian heartland, where the majority of the population is still Assyrian. Self-government in an autonomy within the boundaries of the Iraqi state is the only way for the Assyrians in Iraq to escape the enormous pressure from the increasingly radical Muslim majority.

In an autonomous Assyrian region also Assyrians from other parts of Iraq would find a refuge, instead of being forced to migrate through the neighboring countries of Syria and Jordan to Europe and America. Also other Christian Iraqis, like the Armenians, could settle there to live in security. This would be in line with the ambition of many European countries to make efforts on site to prevent refugee disasters, instead of receiving the refugee streams in the camps on home ground, with all the strains that an overused asylum process brings with it. Many Assyrian refugees currently in Europe and America, illegally or waiting for their asylum applications to be processed, would move back to Iraq if they had an Assyrian region where they could feel safe and where they could build up a life. Not to mention the several hundred thousands of Assyrian refugees in Jordan and Syria, waiting for a chance to get to Europe.

If a safe haven is not created for the Assyrians in Iraq within a near future, Europe and America should be prepared for an enormous refugee stream the coming decade, to be compared to a full scale evacuation of the Assyrian population of Iraq. The Assyrians should be prepared for a definite and final extinction from their historical lands. The world should be prepared for the termination of one of the worlds oldest civilizations after a continuous presence of five thousand years in Mesopotamia.

EasternStar News Agency