When identifying villains, we tend to look for single words to put after 'the', like 'the Sunni', 'the Americans', or 'the Kurds'. But that unfairly labels entire populations as villains when in fact the vast majority of those populations are comprised good people who have the same aspirations for their children as you and I.

Many ChaldoAssyrian Christians in Iraq are being persecuted and driven from their homes by a variety of groups for a variety of reasons including Islamic Fundamentalists who have declared war on Christianity, and Kurdish Authorities looking to turn ChaldoAssyrian Christian villages into Kurdish villages for a greater Kurdistan.

These are specific groups who deserved to be blamed for the atrocities committed on the ChaldoAssyrians, but to blame the greater population is simply wrong.

The Kurdish people have paid a heavy price, not only under the Saddam Hussein Regime, but in the entire region. They continue to face discrimination and persecution despite the fact that there are more than 25 million Kurds spread throughout the Middle East.

When ChaldoAssyrians blame 'the Kurds', it backfires. Instead of the Kurdish people putting pressure on their leaders to respect the rights of the ChaldoAssyrians, the Kurdish people are force to defend themselves as a nation because they have been accused as a nation.

Instead of the Western world being sympathetic to the ChaldoAssyrian cause, they ignore ChaldoAssyrians because the loyalty of the west lies with the Kurdish people who they see as the defenders of the Secular Democracy concept in Iraq.

For the ChaldoAssyrian cause to succeed, which is to live peacefully in the land they have called home for thousands of years, they must accurately identify the problems and present enough evidence to compel those in a position to help resolve the problems, to act.

If there are no pictures or video clips of the problems, as far as the west is concerned, the problems don't exist.

There wasn't a problem in Iraqi prisons until the photos from the Abu Graib prison were released. The insurgency was under control until insurgents started releasing videos of beheadings and bombings. Even in America, no action was taken on behalf of the Civil Rights movement for blacks until the Evening News started showing police using water hoses and attack dogs on protesters. Unfortunately people respond faster out of shame and disgust then they do out of the goodness of their hearts.

The problem with issues affecting ChaldoAssyrian Christians is that in the villages in northern Iraq, there are no cameras or reporters around to cover crimes against the community. The insurgency has limited the world media to the Green Zone in Baghdad and as embeds with the troops. The only way that the ChaldoAssyrian story will get out is if ChaldoAssyrians do it themselves. If ChaldoAssyrians cannot get their message out to the world media they might as well pack their bags and leave Iraq, because ethnic cleansing and atrocities do not stop on their own. They stop when those committing them are forced to stop. And the world media cannot do anything if the only pictures and video they have is of people marching in protest.

ChaldoAssyrians don't need guns and militias, but they do need cameras and internet connections. The Kurdish people and the world's democracies will rally to the ChaldoAssyrian cause so long as they as they have visual evidence of the problems, and are not themselves treated as the enemy.

By Gordon Lake
www.christianiraq.com