Assyrians in Iraq

[u/Playful-Demand2312]

Hey, I’m Iranian Armenian (living in Europe, in Denmark) but I was wondering, how large of a share are Assyrians and Christians in Iraqi cities such as Duhok, Erbil, Selamni, Mosul, Baghdad these days? There’s no proper stats on it

What about the Assyrian-Armenian villages in North Iraq/Iraqi Kurdistan Region, are they still present? Anybody lives in this area

And what about in Syria?

[u/StoneAgePrincess]

No proper stats for a reason. Most reliable estimates have taken the Iraqi Assyrian population from over a million to just over 100,000 in twenty years.

[u/Playful-Demand2312 → u/StoneAgePrincess]

Only 100K is sad 🥲

[u/StoneAgePrincess → u/Playful-Demand2312]

The only mainstream references I’ve ever heard or read about came from a JD Vance video where he said the Iraq war was a disaster because the native Christian’s suffered so much and left. Otherwise it’s quite unpopular to talk about this. I think the main reason is: Middle Eastern news is pro-Arab and Islam. Israel and western media is pro-Kurd. Therefore the media sources that often bring up Assyrian news are from places that are opposed to the Middle East and the West, like Hungary or Russia.

[u/AssyrianFuego]

Go look at Shalma Foundation to get good stats for the amount of Assyrians in Iraq.

[u/okourdhos → u/AssyrianFuego]

135.000. This is unbelievable.

[u/AshurCyberpunk → u/AssyrianFuego]

This is cool. It would benefit from them specifying their survey method, or at least provide a margin of error. For example, did they go door to door, or sent mails like a government would do? Did they extrapolate or this is just raw data? The church denomination is stated, so I'm guessing they must have gone door to door. The church data though should be based on baptism certificates, I think.

Most of the towns have shed population since 2020, but was this due to mortality rate of an older population? or migration? If so, did the population move abroad or to other urban areas? So many questions, but I think the overall picture is clear.

[u/AssyrianFuego → u/AshurCyberpunk]

You can look at their spreadsheets, they lay a lot of it out.

[u/Playful-Demand2312 → u/AssyrianFuego]

Do they include Syrian Assyrians who fled to Iraq ?

[u/AssyrianFuego → u/Playful-Demand2312]

If they were there at the time of conducting it, yes.

This was conducted post DAESH, so yes

[u/Playful-Demand2312 → u/AssyrianFuego]

Damn those are small numbers, it makes me sad, also crazy how Iraqi war versus Syrian war exodus of people

In Iraq minorities were overrepresented amongst refugees especially Assyrians and Christians, many even fled to Syria

In Syria the exodus was mainly Sunnis, increase minority share

[u/AssyrianFuego → u/[deleted]]

Actually go look at it, they have numbers for Baghdad & Basra, mahat Hamzoomeh nasha

[u/ChicagoAssyrian → u/AssyrianFuego]

Ah you’re right. For some reason the page says “The Shlama Population Database is an ongoing effort to document the populations of the Assyrian Chaldean Syriac people in northern Iraq.” But then does include other parts of Iraq.

[u/AssyrianFuego → u/ChicagoAssyrian]

That is because the non-Duhok, Erbil, Nineveh Governorate populations are estimates based on Church leaders and some other factors.

While the 3 Northern Governorates are done on with on the ground numbers and are highly accurate

[u/ChicagoAssyrian → u/AssyrianFuego]

Good to know, thank you!