Failing in their attempt of the 'final solution' following the Assyrian
massacre, the French and British Mandates, divided the Assyrians
further by resettling part of them in inhospitable arid 'state' lands
that lacked means of irrigation and were classified by the Arab
governments of Iraq and Syria as (mawat) dead land and malarial. Assyrian
groups that had earlier resisted the mandate's dictates were expelled from
Iraq and settled in reservation camps in Syria, pending their settlement
in the Ghab desert. Some were allowed to remain in villages in northern
Iraq, under strict control of the Iraqi central government. Many other
Assyrian families were left stranded in towns and cities, unaided, clouded
with uncertainty. The Assyrians of Urmia, Iran met with a worse situation.
They were considered as aliens, of foreign (Persian) affiliation, and
granted indefinite residence permit and left to fend for themselves. As a
result, the Assyrians were fragmented further. They were shattered and
lost everything; they lost their homes and families, their voice and
authority; and above all their freedom and dignity.
One of the unifying features of the Assyrian people was their Aramaic
language. To distinguish themselves as Christians of Assyrian heritage,
members of all the church groups, regardless of their geographical
location and affinity, identified themselves to one another as 'Surayi'.
This terminology bonded them together. With this reciprocal recognition of
one another, they assured themselves that no matter what Christian
denomination they belonged to, they were all Assyrian in race, nationality
and culture. To reaffirm that, they held fast to their Assyrian spoken and
written language of both the Eastern and Western dialects. To preserve
their Assyrian heritage, they spoke the Assyrian language at home and in
private and continued using it as the liturgical language in their
churches throughout Turkey, the Middle East and Persia. The Arabs and
Ottomans tolerated this 'Suraya' term so long as those 'millet'
communities did not engage in politics or declare themselves publicly
Assyrian. By continuing to practice their Assyrian language, it was enough
to confirm to themselves and indicate to the world that they were
Assyrian. They were determined to keep their culture alive and protect
their heritage. Despite all the adversities they had been through, the
Assyrians have survived their ordeal. Their faith in their Assyrian
identity has grown stronger and their determination in pressing ahead for
restoration of their homeland is gaining momentum.
The long term process of the Arab/Islamic rule is to neutralize the
Assyrians, distort their true identity to Syriani; annul their genuine
Assyrian language to Syriac; diminish their number through fragmentation
and dispersion and bury the Assyrian civilization under the falsified
edifice of the Arab tent of Saddam Hussain. Such suppressive measures,
they think will, in time, bring the fragmented Assyrian nation to its
heels. They presume the Assyrian people, put under constant pressure of
the millet provision, will succumb to the inevitable. They apply
persistent pressure on the Assyrian to wear him down in order that he may
give way, and revoke his identity and acquire a new one, acceptable to the
domineering rulers of the Islamic states by force majeure. Curiously, the
government of Iraq recognizes 'Syriani' (Assyrian western dialect) as the
official language of the Assyrians in Iraq, while Syria does not recognize
the Syriani language and denies the Syrianis of Syria the right to
practice their Syriani mother tongue publicly, forcing them to speak
Arabic instead.
The Western Allies ignored the simple fact that the Assyrians of
Mesopotamia had been forcibly ejected from parts of their territory and
separated into smaller groups by newly mandated borders, drawn by previous
and subsequent conquerors. It was an inhumane method of attempted
extermination of a harmless nation by dispersion and fragmentation.
Instead of rehabilitating the Assyrians in their ancestral homeland as an
independent sovereign state, the Assyrian territory was partitioned by the
power brokers, and incorporated into the four neighbouring states in a
frenzy mood to destroy all trace of the Assyrian cultural identity. The
Assyrians were entrapped in the vicious closed circle of perpetual
colonialism - Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab and Ottoman. In post World War
One, Western imperialism handed out Assyria back to oriental colonialism.
Yet, the Assyrians, remaining loyal as ever to their Western Allies and
pledge of liberating themselves from bondage, have always stood fast to
their faith, language and culture. They remain steadfast in their
objective of liberating themselves as one united people until Assyria is
back in the hands of its rightful owners.
Despite the intolerance and heavy handedness of successive foreign rule,
the Assyrians continued to live on their land, defending their soil, up in
the highlands of Mosul. Assyria's territorial loss has made a severe
impact on their lifestyle. The Hakkari district now under the Turkish
rule, has since been ethnically cleansed. In recent years, scores of
Assyrian villages in the region of northern Iraq have been depopulated
forcibly by the Iraqi Ba'ath regime. The Assyrians in Persia, scattered
all along its western border (at one time extending from Urmia north, down
to Abadan south), despite the political and cultural turbulence over the
years, still enjoy a measure of tolerance under the current Islamic
regime. In Syria, recent water shortage in Khawoora (Khabur) River has had
a severe impact on their livelihood. The 34 Assyrian villages existing
along the Khabur riverbanks are struggling for survival. Many families are
deserting their farms and villages in search of greener pastures abroad.
Unless something is done, and very soon, to relieve them of their plight,
indications are that the Assyrian community there is headed towards
disintegration. Syria's long term intimated policy is to assimilate the
Assyrians into the Arab culture and integrate them as subjects of the Arab
state, similar to the attempts being made on the Syriani Assyrians.
The first paragraph of Section 'F' (of the Decision of the Council of the
defunct League of Nations Relating to the Application of the Principles)
of Article 22 of the Covenant to Iraq for Settlement of the Assyrians
of Iraq1 (in Syria) states the following:-
"From the time of their admission to the territory of the Levant
States under French mandate until their naturalisation, the legal
status of the Assyrians will be that of other foreigners, subject to
the application of certain special derogations specified below."
Section F. CIVIL, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL STATUS OF THE ASSYRIANS,
1935.
The last paragraph of Section
'F' concludes that
"The Mandatory Power proposes to
naturalise all the Assyrians en bloc at a date to be fixed in
agreement with the Council, after the expiry of a period which, in
principle, will not be less than that of five years provided for in
Article 3, paragraph I, of the High Commissioner's Decree No. 16/S, of
January 19, 1925."
The mandatory powers, through the League of Nations, integrated the
Assyrians into different countries; each group according to the country
under which their territory fell or they happened to be at the time of
partitioning or creation of the new Islamic states. Foreign citizenship
was imposed upon them. Thus, their land was taken away from them, their
language and identity suppressed and their entity annulled. If the League
of Nations was to classify and recognize the Assyrians as refugees, it
would have created implications with the world powers and strained its
budget. It would have recognized their holistic rights and left Mosul
detached from Iraq and rehabilitated the Assyrians in northern Mesopotamia
as an independent nation. It would have admitted that Article 22 of the
Covenant of the League of Nations in itself was no more than an Allied
creation, designed to protect the interests of major Western Powers. It
would have shown that their dealings with the Assyrians were iniquitous
and immoral. The League of Nations consequently evaded the issue. It
reluctantly removed the subject matter from its agenda and placed it on
hold, in abyss. It suspended the Assyrian case and filed it away and
absolved itself from any further commitment towards the Assyrians by
dismantling the refugee camps in Baquba and Hanaidi in Iraq. The aim of
the mandatory powers was to appease the Islamic countries, at the expense
of the Assyrians, by re-settling them among the Arab majority, with the
prospect of total assimilation. Power brokers prioritized world issues in
keeping with their self interest. The Assyrian issue being under the
jurisdiction of the mandatory powers, power-play gave precedence to the
security of oil and protection of their interests over the right of
resettlement of the Assyrian people in their own region. The Assyrians
being a distinct people, different from their surrounding neighbours in
language, religion and culture, were looking forward to full independence,
totally free from foreign rule, whether Western or Oriental, British or
French; Turkish or Arab. Their expectations were dashed as a result of the
arrogant and disdainful action of the Anglo-French mandates.
The mandatory powers helped Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria annex the divided
Assyria and part of Armenia to their territories. The Treaty of Lausanne,
on 24 July 1923, with Turkey, confirmed the deal. Thus, the map of
Mesopotamia was redrawn by the Anglo-French forces and handed on a silver
platter to the Islamic states in return for protecting the strategic and
economic interests of their governments. This reprehensible act of
geopolitical change, the eradication of Assyria, was an act of betrayal
and flagrant violation of human rights. Having accomplished that, the
mandated powers then embarked on the second stage of their scheme: the
total eradication of the identity of the Assyrian individual and the
Assyrian contemporary history, considering its surviving people as
non-Assyrian multitude millets, having no place in the emerging Middle
Eastern countries. They were determined to phase out the Assyrian
nationality altogether after tricking them out of their inheritance. Soon
Arab states mushroomed all over the region, dominating the whole Middle
East, in fulfillment of the nomadic Arab wish. They endeared themselves to
the Arab states with distribution of the historical lands that rightfully
belonged to peoples of other nations within the region. In October 1949,
the Assyrian 'inactive' file was transferred to the United Nations
Organization and filed away in their archives. The United Nations failed
the Assyrian people for lack of the political will. The UN has since
played down the issue, ignoring it completely. The UN, to extricate
itself, has pushed the Assyrian issue aside, leaving it in limbo. UN's
reaction to the tragedy of the Assyrian people is passive; its response,
mute and its decision, non-committal. So much for its principles of doing
justice, enhancing diversified cultures, defending human rights and
promoting democracy.
The Assyrian has since been labeled Persian, Iraqi, Turkish or Syrian.
Without a travel document he could not cross the newly demarcated
borderlines. The new political boundaries formed barriers that prevented
the Assyrian from joining his people on the other side of the border. He
was restricted in his movement and could not travel freely in his own
homeland as had traditionally been the case prior to the creation of these
Arab states. He was pinned down and cut off completely from his family and
kinfolk. By denying the Assyrian people access to their ancestral
homeland, they were disconnected from their loved ones and separated from
their relatives and kinfolk. Through inhumane and prohibitive actions, the
Islamic states suppressed their racial identity and derogated their social
status. The Assyrians became a people without a country, yet in all their
diversified ethnic and denominational groups, they realize that they are
all Assyrians and belong to one nation - Assyria.
Although the national identity of the Assyrian people has been distorted,
the majority of the various segments in question are still proud to
declare themselves Assyrians and recognize themselves as such. Yet,
officially and statistically, its civilization has been described as dead
and its people extinct. As a country, it no longer exists. Assyria is
equated with Assyriology and archaeology and its people with ancient
history, long past and forgotten. You only read about them in history
books as a people of antiquity, long dead and gone. All Arab and Islamic
state and private schools have withdrawn and removed textbooks on Assyria
from their curricula - even Assyria's ancient history as a subject has
been dropped by the board of studies of the ministry of education of Iraq
and the other Middle Eastern states. They only touch on the subject with a
passing glimpse. At best the vital statistics of the Iraqi government in
its census indicates the 'Nestorian' Assyrian population less than one per
cent (1%), eluding the world public opinion that the rest of the
denominations in question are not Assyrian.
During the British mandated period, in Iraq, the Assyrian leaders were
shunned by the British. The objection of the Assyrians to their
resettlement in an inhospitable malarial area in north western Iraq and
eastern Syria, was described by the British as disruptive and defiant of
the world order of the day. The notion of considering a homeland for the
Assyrians in their Middle Eastern region was far removed from the mind of
the mandatory powers, especially the British. Under the Treaty of
Sevres
of 10th August, 1920 between the Allies and Ottoman Turkey, the victorious
Allied Powers made the unjustifiable mistake of considering the Middle
East as Arab land and termed the whole Middle Eastern region as 'Arab Asia'.
They ignored grievances and natural rights of the oppressed native Jews,
Assyrians, and other ethnic groups to whom most of the Middle East
legitimately belongs. To add insult to injury, in the Lausanne Treaty of
24th July, 1923, the Allies defined the liberated territories of the
native inhabitants of the Middle East as
'former Arab provinces', giving the Arabs the green light to
lay claim to the whole of the Middle East in toto.
The conquering powers went ahead and established Arab states and created
Islamic kingdoms by the dozen. They gave away unashamedly and without any
remorse, territories that by right belonged to the Assyrian nation, the
Jewish people and Arab Christians. Trusting in the ethics and morality of
the Mandatory Powers - braggarts of 'Justice' and 'life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness' - British and French Mandatory Powers failed to make
good their promises. Justice and democracy were lacking in them and found
wanting.
Notes:
1. Last
paragraph of Section F. CIVIL, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL STATUS OF THE
ASSYRIANS. Royal Government of Iraq Correspondence Relating to Assyrian
Settlement, from 13th July, 1932 to 5th August, 1933; PART II -
Communicated to the Council and the Members of the League of Nations.
Report of the Committee of the Council on the Settlement of the Assyrians
of Iraq in the Region of the Gab (French mandated Territory of the Levant)
Official No.: C.352 M. 179. 1935. VII.
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