Okay, if that didn't depress you...
...this will. Amid the noise and shrapnel of sectarian violence in Iraq, with Sunnis killing Shias and Shias killing Sunnis and both very likely supplied and supported by their regional allies, we can sometimes - frequently - forget that there are other communities in Iraq with their own stories and facing their own pain. From the BBC:
Caught in a triangle of religious, ethnic and criminal violence, communities which once made up as much as 14% of the country's population get little state protection, said Hunain Qaddo, chairman of the Iraqi Minorities Council, a Baghdad-based non-governmental organisation. ...These communities, unlike the big three, have no militias for their protection and the Iraqi police are simply not up to the job even assuming they're interested in doing it. They are, essentially, on their own.
He says that his own community, the Shabaks of the Nineveh Plains, face oblivion as a people, targeted physically by al-Qaeda militants because they are mainly Shia, and politically by Kurdish separatists with claims on their land. ...
Iraq's minorities range from large communities like Turkmens and Christians to small groups of Armenians, many of them descended from refugees from the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago, and Palestinians given sanctuary by Saddam Hussein. ...
[T]he number of minority group members among the 2m refugees from Iraq is believed to be disproportionately high.
Mandaeans who fled to Syria told the BBC earlier this year harrowing stories of forced conversion, rape and murder by Islamists.
A Minority Rights Group International report published in February notes that Mandaeans, who follow a religion which pre-dates both Islam and Christianity, are also targeted by criminals because they traditionally work as goldsmiths and jewellers. ...
Christians have found themselves in a similar dilemma: targeted by Sunni extremists because of their religion and by kidnappers - who are often Shia Arab militants or rogue members of the security forces - because of their wealth.
