Life was already difficult under Saddam Hussein. But only in the aftermath of the American invasion did life become intolerable. Sunni radicals, assisted by gangsters, kidnappers and land-grabbers of different brands, stole, bombed, kidnapped, murdered and cleansed the Christians from Baghdad and elsewhere. Driven out to stinking poverty-stricken villages on the plains of Nineveh or seeking refuge in Mosul, on the brink of ethnic civil war and amid the bomb blasts, the Christians had no outside help. The West was embarrassed by them. So they have left in their tens of thousands. Of some 1.4 million Christians living in Iraq before the war, perhaps 400,000 remain. They have gone to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Some have gone to America. Sweden has opened its borders, and so in varying degrees have Germany and France. Not Britain, of course. 

The destruction of Christian communities in Iraq, conducted with Western knowledge and complicity, is now being repeated in Syria. The Iraqi Christian arrivals knew what to expect, presumably, but it was a shock to the two million indigenous Syrian Christians, who had enjoyed a secure and comfortable existence. Assad's regime was viciously repressive if you challenged it. But it also maintained order, respected property, permitted diversity and protected religious freedom. It was clear from the start that any revolution would imperil these benefits. It was evident that Saudi money and influence would dominate the secular opposition, and that the Salafists and al-Qaeda would fight more brutally and emerge on top. Yet at no stage did the West express worries for the minorities, above all the Christian minority, caught up in the maelstrom. When Assad finally falls, there will be a terrible reckoning against those that the now radicalised Sunni majority want to punish. It has already begun. 

Christian refugees from Syria have been flooding into Lebanon and Turkey. In Lebanon it is to the existing Christian communities and monasteries that they look for shelter and sustenance. The richer ones hope to buy a smuggled passage to Europe for the going rate of $20,000. Others wait on events, wondering when they will be on the move again. Those Christians who get out across the border into Turkey — bypassing the refugee camps, where the men would be conscripted by anti-Assad fighters — are ironically returning home. The region once housed the heartland of the Syrian Orthodox Church whence the Syriacs fled the early 20th-century genocide. 

Half the Middle East's Christians live in Egypt, where the Copts are some 10 per cent of the population. But that is changing too. There is a massive outflow, mainly to the United States. From the time of Sadat and then increasingly under Mubarak the Copts were under threat. The threat was localised, from vengeful and envious preachers and mobs, but government, in covert relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, failed to protect. Since the Egyptian Revolution the threat is no longer localised. It is felt throughout Egypt; and it also comes from the top. It underpins the state in the new Sharia-based constitution, which President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, in a deal with their Salafist rivals, steamrollered through. The new constitution undermines the political rights of Christians; it threatens Church funds; and it legitimises the brutal campaign waged against those that Islam regards as "converts". Recently, a Coptic woman, Nadia Mohamed Ali, who was raised a Christian but married a Muslim, sought on her husband's death to return to her faith and have her and her children's identification papers changed. In January this year, a court sentenced her to 15 years in prison.