In the shadow of the reports and the focus on what is happening in for instance Falluja and other parts of Iraq the Islamic fundamentalists are conducting a systematic and well thought out campaign to drive out and dislodge Assyrians from the Mosul area in Northern Iraq. Assyrians in Sweden and in the rest of the world are receiving daily reports about atrocities. Assyrian women are raped, Assyrian men are decapitated, Assyrian children are kidnapped, and Assyrians are chased out of what has been their homeland for thousands of years. This barbarous behaviour has reached Sweden. Assyrians who have
left Iraq and sought refuge in Sweden are being pressured for money, under the threat that their relatives in Iraq will otherwise be killed.

Early one Monday morning in the end of October, Assyrian woman Nasrin Shabo Mourad, age 42, heard gunshots outside her home in Mosul, Iraq. She went up on the roof of her house and saw six men armed with machineguns. She called both her husband and her brother from her mobile phone to tell them that
their house was under fire. The armed men got in to the court yard. In Iraq the roofs are mostly flat, and you can literally walk over to your neighbour ­ from roof to roof. Nasrin fled to the neighbours.

The Islamists threatened to shoot anyone who would protect her. Nasrin, who did not want the death of her neighbours on her conscience, opened the neighbours' gate and pleaded to the Islamists by referring to the prophet Mohammed's mercy. To no use. The Islamists shot her in front of her neighbours. The murderers believed that her husband was working for the Americans. Nasrin was wounded, but not dead. The Islamists threatened to kill the doctor who had come to her rescue, if he would try to save her. The doctor was forced to let her bleed to death

Last Sunday the Islamists contacted Nasrin's family. They are demanding the widower, Nasrins husband, to pay 15.000 US Dollars as "damages" or "compensation" for working with the Americans. If the sum is not paid, his three sons, age 15, 18 and 22, will be killed. Nasrin's husband says that he does not work for the Allied forces. In stead he believes that the Islamists know that he has a large family abroad, in Sweden among other places, and that the family will be able to raise the demanded sum of money.

The murdered Nasrin has two brothers, two sisters and several cousins in Sweden. They are all living around Stockholm and are right now doing all they can to collect money for the Islamists' ransom.

The fate of Nasrin and her family is terrible, but it is only one of many. Not a day passes without Assyrians from Iraq receiving messages of different kinds of assault, bombing of churches, rape of nuns, decapitation of men and kidnapping of children. The Islamists send out videotapes showing the murders of Christians to Assyrians all over the world. Their aim is to intimidate Assyrians, no matter where they live. New Islamist groups are taking advantage of the situation to drive out the indigenous people of Iraq out of their homeland. In defence of their inhuman acts the Islamists say that the Assyrians, whether true or not, work for the Allies. The enemy.

The Assyrians of Iraq today symbolize the "Christian" western world. Some Muslim leaders have made public statements saying that "they (i.e. the Islamists) should not touch the domestic Christians". Empty words. What are they doing in real life to protect their Christian "brothers" and countrymen? Jordan, Syria and Turkey ­ the neighbouring countries ­ are full of Assyrian refugees who have escaped the recent church bombings in Iraq.

The war in Iraq is terrible for everyone. Blood is spilled every day. And no man's life is worth more than another's. But there is a great difference between the systematic driving-out and ethnic cleansing of human beings from their land, and the war covered in the media's daily reports.