True. Saddam used his famously authoritarian ways to keep a lid on the Shari’a extremists, whom he (rightly) saw as threats to his pragmatic personal power, and so he somewhat cultivated the Chaldeans (Catholic) and the Assyrians (Christian Church of the East). A lot of people say it wasn’t until Saddam was swept away by the US that the “lid” blew off and all hell broke loose.
Very simlar to what happened after Tito in Yugoslavia.