He spent all the money he'd saved from his job as a construction contractor to smuggle his family to the dirt-floor tents of a Turkish refugee camp, then to Istanbul. They spent a year and a half in Greece until they applied for asylum with Red Cross help and were accepted into the United States in December 1992.

Now, 15 years and another Iraq invasion later, the family is safe, but they worry about relatives back home and about the Assyrian future.

"We feel this could be the end of a people who have survived since Babylonian times," said Zack Samow, 34, Isaac's oldest son. "This could be the wave that pushes Assyrians out of their homeland for good."

As cities and towns are reshaped at gunpoint into homogenized Sunni, Shia or Kurdish territory, groups without their own militias or political power are left vulnerable to attacks, said Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The priest in Samow's hometown of Telkaif disconnected his phone to stop the barrage of threats, the family said.

Assyrian Christians — among the first converts to Christianity — and other ethnic and religious minorities have been particularly hard-hit by the sectarian violence, she said. Among those leaving are Jews; Sabean-Mandeans, who follow John the Baptist; Yazidis, ethnic Kurds whose religion precedes Christianity and Islam; Baha'i and Iraqi Turkmen, Shea said.

They might dress differently from their Muslim neighbors, speak other languages and pursue businesses that make them stand out — selling liquor, for example. In addition to a construction business, Samow ran three eating and drinking establishments in Iraq.

Many speak English, and work as translators means they're also often seen as siding with the United States, said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch.

"They're not just being hunted down because of their religious identity," Frelick said. "Many of them are regarded as being pro-Western."

Their absence could allow the region to become less tolerant as it loses the diversity that has characterized it for centuries. And that could have long-term geopolitical consequences, Shea said.

"It's a profound loss," Shea said. "These populations have lived together for a long time, but if this continues, it will not be a plural society any more. It'll be devoid of non-Muslims."