About the picture: I'm not how much it is real, according to what I know (from many soldiers who serves there) that these kids sometimes tends to be extremely provocative (and not just them) and they try to catch the right moment, I don't say that it doesn't exist at all (and the officer who ordered this will be punished, it is against the rules and the soldiers must not obey him or they will be punished too) many times the photo isn't in the right context at all.
About the Assyrians: as fa as I know, the Assyrian actually did reserved their cultures, and fought for independence at the same time as the Armenian did, but they became minority in their homeland as the years progressed, many of them resisted Arabiziation and they still speak Aramaic, they suffered Genocide from the Turks as well, and now they flee from Iraq and Syria due to the heavy prosecution they are suffering from.
Egyptians lost their culture after the conversation to Christianity by the Byzantines, the Coptics are still some remnants of this culture, actually the Siwa Oasis was so isolated, that they didn't Arabized well into the Medieval (and in some sort, even in the 19th century they didn't fully Arabized, but they are Berbers).