Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the archbishop of the military, has said one of the unintended consequences of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the resulting annihilation of the already-minority Christian community:

You can say in a certain sense that the invasion of Iraq did provoke this tremendous diminution of the Christian population in that country. And what the future holds, that still remains to be seen,” the archbishop for the armed forces told CNA during his visit to Rome on Jan. 16…

Aid agencies estimate that over the course of eight years, the Catholic population of Iraq fell from over 800,000, to less than 150,000 now…

Likewise, while Christians have always been an extremely small minority in Afghanistan, since the invasion there are now no public Christian churches remaining.

In both cases, the small Christian populations have largely fled after the US-supported governments failed to provide them the physical protection they felt they needed.

US military chaplains continue to try to nurture a relationship with a few remaining Christian pastors from Iraq.