Christian minority in Iraq seeks autonomy in post-Mosul Iraq
What do Iraqi Christians expect from the post-Islamic State era?
One of them was Syriac, the other was Chaldean. The Syriac speaks Arabic but understood my conversation with his comrade in English. The Chaldean is a member of the Kurdistan parliament who speaks in perfect, fluent English. Among the three denominations that constitute one of the oldest Christian communities in Mesopotamia, only a representative of the Assyrian community was not present.
Syriacs, Assyrians and Chaldeans are ethnically and linguistically the same people. They take pride in speaking Aramaic, the language Jesus Christ spoke. Generally, they do not like to be asked whether they are Syriac, Assyrian or Chaldean. They insist that they are all the same and that such a question is of a divisive nature.
