Some want Iraqi Christian region as haven from violence; others want more visas

"Expatriate Iraqi Christians living in the United States disagree about how best to help their families in the Middle East, where they live under constant threat of sectarian violence.
. . . Some would like to see visa restrictions relaxed so their relatives can join them. Others hope for the creation of an independent administrative zone in the northern Nineveh area, the ancestral homeland of Iraq's Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians.
"As a people, we survived the Mongols, the Turks and the Arabs," said John Michael, a Chicago ophthalmologist whose cousins recently left for Syria.
. . . Christians have been targeted by militias for murder and kidnapping.
. . . About 40 percent of [about 3,000 people leaving daily] . . . are Christian, according to estimates from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Christians account for just 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
. . . One Washington group, the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, is using the crisis to revive a proposal for creating an autonomous zone for Christians in the Nineveh plain, near Mosul, like that of the Kurds _ a dream long held by ethnic Chaldean and Assyrian politicians."

source
The Associated Press. U.S. Iraqi Christians Seek Help. December 15, 2006.

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A history of Iraq

posted: monday, december 18, 2006, 1:53 AM ET

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