ts, sockmonkey wrote: You do realize the Kurds have also driven Christians and Yazidis from the Nineveh Plains, don’t you?
Yes, Iraqi Kurds did both.
I hesitate to admit it, but it was a fact.
But from the beginning of the assault on the Ezidi, PKK and YPG defended the Ezidis. There were over 900 PKK soldiers killed defending the Ezidi and an unknown number of YPG. The Iraqi Kurds gave no assistance to the Ezidi. It was not all Iraqi Kurds who attacked the Ezidi, to the best of my knowledge only one of the clans there did.
This is a bit confusing because both Ezidi and Kurds that I am familiar with admit that the Kurds are decended from the Ezidi.
As far as Christian persecution in Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds do not openly admit persecution of Christian. They blame ISIS. ISIS is largely guilty, but there is more subtle persecution of Christians in Iraq, particularly since the defeat of ISIS.
I had long contacts with Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Iraq. They have their own internal divisions. Like Eastern Orthodox and Chaldean Catholics. I inadvertently stumbled into a disagreement among them once and a Catholic priest in the US requested that I remove a Tweet that I made in order to stop the arguments. I complied and later found out some of the issues. I was not involved in the discussion, but my Tweet was central by coincidence.
Part of the issue deals with attitude of Catholics there with the government in Baghdad. The Iraqi Catholic leadership want to act as intermediaries with the Muslim power brokers in Baghdad. Some of the Assyrian elements do not want anything to do with that. Even individuals there have tried to be on both sides of that argument.
But, I was told very few of the Christians in Nineveh had returned (>1 year ago). But as the historic Christians of Nineveh left in the wake of ISIS, some Iraqi Muslims were converting and refilling the pews.
VP Pence took an active part in helping them. Which I applaud him for.
I have maps showing historic distribution of each of the Christian elements and the Ezidi communities in Iraq and in N. Syria. The data source? Was local in the region and probably from government data. I flinched when I first saw the maps. But have saved them and their source URLs. They were very well done maps populated with computer based data.
You will not find religious persecution by N. Syrian Kurds. I know them. They do not tolerate it. You can blame the PKK influence for a lot of things, but that is not one of them.
In N. Syria, the Syriac Christians were a part of the largely Kurd YPG from the beginning of the battle against ISIS.
Later some of the N. Syrian Christians became the MFS group, which was all Christian and part of the SDF.
I don’t know any Chaldean Christians in Syria. There probably are some in the Damascus area.
Many of the residents in N. Syria fled Iraq into remote Northern Syria during Genocides and Massacres in Iran and Iraq. Some of them were never recognized as Syrian citizens and most of them were not supporters of Assad. Assad is brutal and evil too. He is about his power.