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Assyria
is the historical name and landmark of the
Assyrian Nation, in Bet Nahrain (Mesopotamia). Since post World War I,
hundreds of Assyrian villages have been expropriated by the marauding
Kurds. Thousands of villagers have been forced out of their homes. Many
Assyrian families have withdrawn to big cities, mainly Ninveh (Mosul),
Arbil and Kirkuk, or have left the country all together for fear of
reprisal, for refusing to abide by the false Kurdish type Democracy,
modeled on the Islamic Shari'a law.
Currently, the restive Kurds are engrossed in their own
machination to obliterate the name Assyria, to deny the surviving
Assyrians in the north their political rights and rights of ownership and
access to their property and lands in general. The Kurds are determined to
sever a large chunk of Assyria, and stake it under the name "Kurdistan".
They are sending threatening messages of cessation. They want the oncoming
permanent government of Iraq to recognize the entire north as the official
region of the Kurds, under the illegitimate name of "Kurdistan". They are
also demanding that the fabricated name be officially recognized and
endorsed in the forthcoming permanent constitution of Iraq. Sedition of
the Iraqi Kurds, under the leadership of the Barazani PDK and Talabani PUK,
poses a real threat to the future existence of the Assyria/ns and unity
and stability of Iraq and the whole of the Middle East.
The Kurdish demand that Assyria be officially named
"Kurdistan" laughs in the face of the Arabs and surrounding states of
Syria, Turkey and Iran. Giving in to their unlawful demand will undermine
the integrity of the United Nations and the Charter of Rights it
professes. For all its political power, with the international resources
available to it, the UN (the champion of international justice and human
rights) seems incapacitated, showing incompetence when addressing the
Assyrian question, placing one bureaucratic obstacle after another before
this aggrieved small nation.
The whole world and the media know that the Kurdish
population is noncontiguous. Historically, although known as alien
residents, the Kurds have never been mentioned as native inhabitants of
Mesopotamia. They have no tangible landmarks to relate to their name in
Assyria, or for that matter, Mesopotamia itself. Kurds are nomadic tribes
that traditionally inhabited the outpost region of the Zagros-Taurus
Crescent, beyond the Bet Nahrain border realm. They encroached on the
Assyrian territory in the 11th century, only after the Islamic invasion
and conquests of the Middle East in the seventh century AD.
The Kurds are spread in all directions, drifting from
the neighbouring "stan" countries into Assyria, without restraint. The
Kurds' deceptive methods and treachery is evident in their vicious design
of changing the names of the Assyrian villages and historical landmarks to
Kurdish, with intent, and the approval of the past and current governments
of Iraq. The Kurds falsely claim to advocate democracy while discreetly
plotting to cut off the Assyrians from their homeland, Bet Nahrain.
The Kurds continue to suppress the name, Assyria. They
claim to be on good terms with the bulk of the existing Assyrians living
in the north. They occasionally show an Assyrian official in Kurdish
attire to calm the fears of the local beholder, re-assure the Arabs and
becalm the West that they are on very good terms with the Assyrians. Yet,
they continue to understate the Assyrian population as dwindling and even
non-existent in certain areas that have long been occupied by the Kurds.
They claim that the Assyrians in the north speak Kurdish, and that the
Assyrians have no qualms at all with the Kurds. Just as Saddam Hussein's
regime tried to label the Assyrians "Christian Arabs", so do the Kurds
avoid the name "Assyrian" and "Assyria". Hussein's regime may have been
removed, but its evil policy against the Assyrians continues with the
Kurds.
During World War I, the victorious Western Powers
struck secret deals with the demised Ottoman Empire. They went ahead and
dismembered part of Armenia and Greece, and the whole of Assyria and
Mesopotamia.
During the Ottoman rule, Assyria was a Turkish colony,
inherited from the Arab invaders earlier, and treated by the Turks as any
other Balkan State. At the time, the Kurds were engaged in
massacres of Christian Assyrians, and pillaging and looting their
property. Yet the Allies, although victors, failed to
effectively subdue the Turks, and bartered the suffering and beleaguered
Assyrian Nation for access to the oil-rich lands of Mesopotamia. The
gratitude owed by the Allies to the Assyrians for their sacrifice during
the Great War was bartered for economic gain.
Turkey gained more land and added more territories to
its original landmass than it had expected. Territorially, in the view of
some historians, Turkey came out the winner rather than loser.
The Western Allies treated Armenia and the whole of
Mesopotamia worse than how the Turks treated the Balkans. At least the
Balkan states of Eastern Europe regained their independence. The
non-Moslem colonized States of the Middle East did not. They all suffered,
namely, Armenia, Lebanon, Assyria and Israel. Part of Armenia was lost to
Turkey. Lebanon was partially, and belatedly restored (in '46). Israel and
Assyria were completely eliminated and wiped out from the map and their
people extinguished, described as non-existent. As if liberty was a
European birthright, other nations were not entitled to it. Middle Eastern
nations that had been suffering under the brutal rule of the Mongol Turks
were not the concern of the West.
The West treated the Christian and Jewish colonized
nations as throwaway. They abandoned them. The West turned their back on
them and left them at the mercy of the abhorrent Islamic Shari'a millet
rule. Darfur, in southern Sudan, is currently facing that same dilemma.
The political voice of all the aggrieved states was
gagged. The international media represented the voice of the victorious
Allies and defended their actions. They remained neutral or mute about the
mistreatment of the Assyrian nation. They did not lift a finger or
protest about the injudicious decisions made against the Assyrians. They
are still playing ignorant of their folly. They are shielding themselves
behind unholy treaties, such as those of the Treaty of Versailles of 28
June 1919, and the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923, with Germany and
Turkey.
The United States is now being accused of hegemony
partly because of Europe's injudicious past actions. Instead of helping
the ex-Turkish colonies to regain independence, the West compromised its
principles and sold out the non-Moslem colonized nations in the Middle
East such as Armenia, Assyria, Israel and Lebanon to replenish its empty
coffers. Europe does not have the guts to admit its past errors. It is
throwing its unresolved problems on the United States to sort out the mess
which Europe itself had created. Instead of accepting responsibility for
its past mistakes, correct its attitude and come out clean, certain
European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, and to a certain extent
Russia, including the shamefaced Turkey have taken the reclining seat.
They are waiting for the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East to
reach its breaking point, then stand up and play the role of the Wiseman
at international conferences and the UN, pointing the finger at the US as
if saying "you see, we told you so!"
Europe's argument is that
their power of arbitration continues to diminish due to America's growing
influence in the region as the world supreme power. Europe wishes to
secure a more powerful part to play the role of direct arbitration in the
arena of world politics. Germany and Turkey seem to want to have a larger
'place in the sun' and more influence.
Reminiscent of
the barbarity of the 3rd Reich, and brutality of the Ottomans, Germany and
Turkey are remindful of Judas' kiss of betrayal. It has become a habit of
Germany to cause World Wars, and Turkey massacres en masse.
America has good reason to show concern and be
cautious. The defunct League of Nations was embarrassingly lax and
ambivalent in implementing certain articles of the peace treaties, which
it concluded with the warring nations. The League of Nations denied
Assyria the right towards gradual independence. It foiled Assyria's
attempt to unshackle itself from Islamic domination. In particular, it
quashed Article 12 of Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points, rejecting it as
irrelevant. Assyria lost sovereignty over its entire territory. Europe
left the Middle East in shambles. Now it is crying foul at America
because of its reluctance to right the wrong. Europe's misdeeds have
backfired in its face, with an adverse effect on its reputation.
During the Ottoman rule, Assyria had been run as a
Turkish colony similar to those of the Balkans. Instead of dismembering
the Ottoman Empire and reducing it to its former original size, as
punishment for the crimes it committed against humanity, the Allied forces
pressured the defunct League of Nations to forsake its human attributes
and act contrary to its conscience. The West abandoned their smallest
ally, Assyria, and left the Assyrian Nation to a miserable fate.
The problem with the Assyrian outstanding issue is that
it lacks international support because players on the stage of politics
come from the same old school. Assyria does not have an official line to
acquaint the world with its current position. Assyria lacks legal
statehood-status, absent of an official line as to its Assyrian racial
identity like the Arab, Kurd and Turkuman. Officially, today in Iraq, the
Assyrian name does not exist, not even on paper. They are identified as
mere Iraqi citizens, Christians perhaps, but not as Assyrians. The
Assyrians have since not been officially recognized as indigenous and
native citizens of Mesopotamia. Since their dispersal, the Assyrians
have been politically marginalized to deny them their traditional rights.
The Assyrians need the support of at least one member
of the Security Council of the United Nations or a group of members of the
General Assembly to resurrect the Assyrian case and bring it before the
General Assembly for discussion.
Assyrians need a dedicated body, with the moral courage and the political
will, to openly state the official line about the situation of the
Assyrians on the ground. The Assyrians, as any other nation, need to
declare their aspirations, invoking the Assyrian dossier sitting dormant
at the UN archives. They need to demand their traditional rights of their
homeland, Assyria. They strongly object to living under the Kurdish
illegitimate name "Kurdistan". The direction for the resumption of talks
is pointing at the UN. Assyrians need to focus on that direction, as did
the Bosnians, the "Kosovars" and the native inhabitants of East Timor. The
Assyrians must demand the attention of the international community to
officially respond to the Assyrian line in order that the Assyrians and
the rest of the world may know where they stand in regard to their
official political status.
The Arabs, including the United Nations, would not tolerate the indecorous
Kurdish behaviour of insurgency. Why should an Iraqi Kurd be considered
higher in status than an Iraqi Assyrian? Religion aside, precedence should
be given to the Assyrians. The Assyrians are the indigenous and original
dwellers of Bet Nahrain, Modern Iraq. Creating a Kurdish state at the
expense of the Assyrian Nation of Bet Nahrain in the north is a blatant
violation of the international laws and a crime against the dispossessed
Assyrian nation.
The Assyrian dossier, currently archived in the UN, needs to be
resurrected. The Assyrian issue, not being legitimately resolved in Post
WWI, was transferred from the defunct League of Nations to its successor,
the United Nations. The West, in order not to be exposed of its ill
treatment of the Assyrians and of mishandling their case, extricated
itself by withdrawing from Iraq prematurely, in 1932. To salvage their
reputation and save face, the parties implicated in the Assyrian case,
decided to hurriedly close the Assyrian dossier and file it away.
The UN is knowingly keeping the Assyrian dossier under wraps. The Assyrian
issue needs to be brought up and the relevant dossier re-activated. The
issue has been kept dormant for nearly a century. It is high time that the
Assyrians woke up to themselves and realised that they have legal rights
on a par with any other dispossessed and aggrieved nation. The Assyrians
have more rights than the Kurds to have their voice heard. The Assyrian
case cries louder for justice than that of the pretentious Kurds.
The defiant stance of the Kurds, with open hostility
and threat of insurgency, will most certainly implicate the neighbouring
countries, and affect the overall make up of Iraq, if not the entire
Middle Eastern region.
The borders of Iraq should be closed to non-Iraqi
nomadic tribes. The archaic tribal laws of the right to herding goats and
sheep to graze and pasture in the north should be restricted to genuine
Iraqis. The country's borders should be controlled and closely monitored
to stem the flow of Kurdish insurgents and others drifting into Iraq
illegally and under the pretext of pasturing rights. The peaceful
Assyrians are steadily losing ground. They are unable to protect their
farms and villages. They are being taken over by the Kurds.
During the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, many Assyrian villages were
evacuated. The villagers were stripped of all their possessions. They were
moved to remote and isolated locations and resettled in inhospitable
areas, absent of all amenities. All the villages in the region of Barwar,
Mishna and Zibar were affected and so were numerous other villages such as
Hariri, Batasi, Qaltsur, Hinar and Derbendoke. The Kurds take advantage of
such upheavals. They obstruct the Assyrians and make it difficult for them
to return to their villages. Yet, they allow the Kurdish people to occupy
them with the excuse that Assyrians are reluctant to return to their
villages. They add that the Assyrians have other plans, perhaps migrating
to the West.
It is now up to the Assyrians - all the Syriac-speaking segments to unite
as one people, form a political coalition, and speak in one voice,
demanding their traditional rights of returning to their ancestral land
and be masters of their own destiny, independent and under their own
sovereign rule.
True democracy is the weight that balances the scales of justice in
granting equal rights to a forgotten and aggrieved nation that has
partaken in building the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia, now
orphaned and neglected by humanity. The yardstick of democracy is the
equal measure of rights to all - to each and every segment of the mosaic
Iraq, not just Arabs and Kurds. How about the Assyrians, the indigenous
people of Assyria, northern Iraq. Do the Assyrians have to remain
subservient to the Arab desert Bedouin of the south and Kurd mountainous
Bedouin of the north?
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