Perspective: Iraq's embattled religious minorities

Beneath the violent Sunni-on-Shi'ite, Shi'ite-on-Sunni headlines, Iraq's sectarian violence has devastated the country's 2,000-year-old Christian community and its religious minorities generally. A tragedy of historic proportions is unfolding.

It is estimated that half of all non-Muslim religious minorities still living in Iraq are internally displaced, in addition to the more than 700,000 who have already fled the country since the war began in March 2003. These minorities comprise three or four percent of the total population of Iraq, but they are around 40 percent of Iraqi refugees, who are thought to number 1.8 million in total. Iraq's religious minorities are Chaldean, Eastern-rite Catholic, Orthodox, Assyrian, Syriac, Mandean, Yizidi, Bahai, Kaka'i and a small number of Jews, among others. Some of these groups are specific to Iraq; all trace roots of hundreds or thousands of years there. The diverse Iraqi religious heritage which they helped create is now in serious decline and may well be irreparable.

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