The Will to Set the Wrong Aright
The Assyrians look up to the United States of America, the U.N. and
the international community as the strong democratic arm of justice.
They look forward to seeing the world body restore Assyria to its
legitimate status and include the Assyrian nation in the new world
order.
The international community is obligated, according to the United
Nations Charter, to free Assyria from Islamic neo-colonialism. Time
and demography of the Assyrian people are irrelevant. The fact
remains that though their country has been appropriated, the
Assyrians are a nation in their own right. It is time that the world
body woke up to itself and realized the seriousness of the plunder
Islamic nations have done to the Assyrian indigenous people and
other peoples of the Middle East. The results of foreign policies of
the international power brokers have caused untold tragedies to
people that looked up to them in the hope of doing justice.
In Post World War I, Britain rejected the Assyrian demand for at
least an autonomous national home within their traditional
territory. It ignored the Assyrian plea and dismissed it as
unacceptable outright. The British confirmed that the rescue
operation of the Hakkari and Urmia Assyrians from the jaws of their
surrounding enemies was no more than a humanitarian gesture. Britain
reiterated that its rescue mission had no political bearing and
should not be translated as a prelude to further political demands.
Yet, Kuwait was declared as a British protectorate following the
outbreak of War with the Ottoman Turks in 1914.
In mid-1961, Kuwait became an independent Sheikdom. In 1963, it
gained full independence as the State of Kuwait and became a
signatory member of the United Nations. If Kuwait had oil, so did
the Assyrian Province of Mosul. Kuwait had a small population of
less than 100,000k, half of whom were Bedouin nomads. The Assyrians
were town and village dwellers. Their total population in Urmia,
Iran and the five main tribes of Hakkari, Turkey (less the so-called
Latin-Catholic Chaldeans) was estimated at between 750,000 to
900,000K. What was the difference? Kuwait was situated along the
seashore of the Arab Gulf had its strategic significance. Mosul was
up in the mountains, in a rugged place, far from the sea and
surrounded by hostile Kords. Besides, the Kuwaitis are Muslims. The
Assyrians are not; they are Christians. Al-Hashim of Saudi Arabia
and the Vatican would have been upset if Assyrians had regained
independence. The Foreign Department of H. Majesty’s Government did
not want to disrupt the smooth relations that existed between the
British Empire and the Arabs or upset the newly created Bedouin
kings. This policy was affirmed by Sir Winston Churchill and the
charismatic officer T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia).
Over 90 years on, since World War I, the Assyrians are still
abandoned. Their pleas for constitutional independence for a
national home in their region have been ignored. In April 1920, the
French and British colonial powers abolished the Assyrian
Resettlement Project, in Baquba. The Allies opened a new camp in the
small village of Mindan (Mundun), about thirty miles northeast of
Mosul. With little concern about their plight, the defunct League of
Nations, in collusion with colonial powers, cancelled the
rehabilitation program for the Assyrians. Instead, the League
Council stopped its relief work and humanitarian assistance,
dismantled its makeshift tents in Baquba and Henaidi in Iraq, and
dismissed the Assyrians to an ominous fate. They were scattered and
left to fend for themselves without any compensation, protection,
shelter or sustenance. They were robbed of their homes and treated
mercilessly. The Assyrians ended up being Ra’iyya. Scattered about,
in the Middle East, like a lost flock, without a shepherd to save
them from their predators.
During the mandated period, the Iraqi and British intelligence
spread rumours that the Assyrians were rich and that although they
looked a bit off colour and shabby in their simple clothes, they
were loaded with gold and well off (Stafford: p 221). They accused
the Assyrians of playing ‘poor’ to avoid suspicion and cover up
their wealth. What a debased statement. The difference between the
Anglo-Iraqi banditry and Turkish-Kordish brigandry was that the
British parcelled Assyria and sold it to the highest bidder of the
four neighbouring Islamic countries, while the Kords pillaged and
destroyed the Assyrian towns and villages, removing all trace of
Assyrian existence there. In the summer of 1933, the Arabs capped
the campaign by massacring the Assyrians, at the hand of the Iraqi
Kordish General Bakir Sodqi.
The Iraqi Government, in collusion with the Muslim Kords, ransacked
Simele and the surrounding Assyrian villages. They were forcibly
removed from their dwellings and expelled from their traditional
homeland, Ninweh, the Province of Mosul. A large number was banished
to Khabur, Syria. The rest of the Assyrians were insulated from the
world media. They were completely cut off from any kind of
humanitarian assistance. They were treated mercilessly and left to
fend for themselves.
Classified as ‘aliens’ by the Iraqi Government, ‘Nestorian’
Assyrians were not allowed to own immovable assets, of any sort. The
government would not allow the sale of land or a house, as a place
of residence, to the Assyrian. Assyrian families lived either in
British cantonments, or Assyrian villages allocated to them by the
Iraqi government. Some destitute families lived on the outskirt of
cities, as fringe dwellers. Gailani Camp, on the outskirts of the
capital city, Baghdad, was a familiar site. The villages were under
strict control and surveillance of the Iraqi central government.
They were not allowed to build churches; neither schools nor
community centres. Their house of worship was a simple one-room
dwelling that resembled a hut more than a church. They could rent
but, by law, they could not purchase land or own property. They
could rent but not own a house. The Assyrians were completely cut
off from the outside world. They lived in total isolation. They
lacked schools, social services and basic amenities. They lived an
impoverished life – prisoners in their own country.
The Iraqi Government’s response to the massacre of the Assyrians was
that ‘*It was no more than an act of exemplary discipline, a warning
for their rebellion against an Islamic sovereign kingdom.’ The
Assyrian massacre of 1933 was no less barbaric than the massacre of
the She’ah residents of Karbala at the hands of the Saudi Sunni in
1802 (*Sayid Muhson Abu-Tabikh, 2001: p 340).
The Iraqi central government branded the Assyrians aliens and
considered all virgin and unoccupied land as crown land. The Iraqi
central government alone decided where the humiliated Assyrian
‘millet’ should be allowed to live and at the price, they
recommended. There was no such thing as free distribution of land.
Their alien classification did not entitle them to re-own their
original land. They had to pay for it. It was at the choosing of the
Iraqi government where the Assyrians were to be settled. The aim of
the Iraqi government was to disperse them among the Arab, Turkuman
and Kordish majority.
The British deceived the Assyrians by playing the role of protection
and formation of the Assyrian Levies. Being under the direct control
and command of the British, it gave the Assyrians a sense of
security and safety, yet without any commitment for their
rehabilitation in the Province of Mosul. The Allies reneged on their
promise to return the Assyrians to the Mosul Province for their
rehabilitation. The British policy was to end its mandate abruptly
and grant Iraq full independence, without resolving the outstanding
problem of the Assyrian people. In August 1932, Britain recognized
Iraq prematurely. Iraq gained full independence and became a
sovereign state and active member of the League of Nations. The
Assyrian situation worsened and ended up in tragedy.
The aim of the mandatory powers was to eventually abandon the
Assyrians to fend for themselves, without the need or help of the
British, and settle as future citizens of Iraq without much
involvement in matters of their local affairs. The Arab concern was
as serious. They wanted to retain the ‘millet provision of the
Islamic Shari’ah Law under which the Assyrians had been ruled by the
Turks.
The British, on the other hand, wanted the idle Kords to be drawn in
proximity to the area of the planned project to recruit labour for
the construction of the highway upwards through the formidable
mountains of the dismembered Assyria. This stratagem helped win the
Kordish leaders to the Anglo-Iraqi side in order to allow them to
recruit casual labour from the idle Kords for the construction of
the highway.
The Iraqi government would have organised the Kords, at a moment’s
notice, into militia groups and unleashed them on the (Kafir)
‘infidel’ Assyrians, at the first available opportunity, by issuing
a (fatwa) religious edict to attack the Assyrians, declaring on them
(jihad) holy war. Nevertheless, the British, being keen on building
the highway, through the formidable northern highlands had the
situation firmly in control. Except for a few small skirmishes, the
general situation remained relatively calm, which did not warrant
agents of the Iraqi government to order enforcement of the issued
(fatwa) religious edict to annihilate the Assyrians. Following is a
relevant discussion narrated between Ismail Beg, a Kordish Chieftain
and Archibald Milne Hamilton, Author of the Book The Road to
Kurdestan:
During their discussion, Hamilton asked if Ismail Beg meant that
Assyrians and Kurds could really live in the same country without
destroying each other, for that was not the impression, he thought.
The Kurdish Chieftain wondered where then the Assyrians had lived
for centuries but in Kurdestan – an unanswerable reply. He added
that they were very much like them and all spoke Kurdish. Ismail Beg
asked Hamilton if he had heard that a petition had been taken
through Kurdestan asking all Mohammedans to declare a holy war
[Jihad] on the Assyrians. The petition was brought by a man from
Mosul. He was the agent of a political party in Baghdad. Ismail Beg
said that they of Rowanduz [city] understood its evil purpose and
refused to have anything to do with it, but the chiefs of other
districts might yet pay heed to such malicious emissaries. The
Kurdish Chieftain said that Hamilton should of course realise that
Assyrians were so intensely disliked by some official circles in
Iraq because they served as Levies during the Arab Rebellion.
(Hamilton: 1937; pp 297-298).
Islam is still keen on seeing that the Assyrians would not stand out
as a people on their own. The ultimate aim was, and still is, to
disperse them and keep them apart. They are determined that their
existence should come to an end, either by dissimulation, decimation
or by the edge of the sword, through (jihad) holy war.
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