Iraqis in Greece
The Iraqi Arabs who arrived in Greece are Muslims from the central and southern parts of Iraq, mostly Sunni with a tiny Shia minority. Sunni Arabs form 17 per cent of the total Iraqi population, which is almost an equal amount if not more than their Turkmen counterparts. Assyrians have a disproportionately large representation amongst Iraqis in Greece, this could be primarily because Greece has a Christian society, in which Iraqi Christians will find it easy to settle down in. Forming a quarter of the population in Greece, Iraqi Christians make up the majority of Christians from the Middle East, who arrived in Greece from the early 1990s.
Iraqi-Assyrians
Assyrians in post-Saddam Iraq have faced a high rate of persecution by fundamentalist Islamists since the beginning of the Iraq War. By early August 2004 this persecution included church bombings, and fundamentalist groups' enforcement of Muslim codes of behavior upon Christians, e.g., banning alcohol, forcing women to wear hijab. The violence against the community has led to the exodus of perhaps as much as half of the community. While Assyrians only made up just over 5% of the total Iraqi population before the war, according to the United Nations, Assyrians are over-represented among the Iraqi refugees (as much as 13%) who are stranded in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.