Assyrians and Syriacs in Iraq

Assyrians and Syriacs in Iraq are those ethnic Assyrian and ethnic Syriac adherents of Syriac Christianity residing in the country of Iraq.

They number at an estimated 0.8 million or roughly 3% of total Iraqi population, forming the country's third or fourth largest ethnic group. [CIA Factbook: "Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%, Turkoman, Assyrian, or other 5% [...] Christian or other 3%" [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/iz.html] , corresponding to an upper limit of some 830,000 Syriac Christians. About 100,000 Assyrians are estimated to have dislocated from Iraq to Syria since 2003 (see Refugees of Iraq#Christians, minorities in Iraq)]

British Mandate

In 1918, Britain resettled 20,000 Assyrians and Syriacs in Iraqi refugee camps in Baquba and Mandan after Turkey violently quelled a British-inspired Assyrian and Syriac rebellion. From there, due to their higher level of education, many gravitated toward Kirkuk and Habbaniya, where they were indispensable in the administration of the oil and military projects. As a result, approximately three-fourths of the Assyrians who had sided with the British during World War I found themselves living in Kurdish areas of Iraq. Thousands of Assyrian men had seen service in the "Iraqi Levies", a force under British officers separate from the regular Iraqi army. Pro-British, they had been apprehensive of Iraqi independence. Most of those thus resettled by the British have gone into exile, although by the end of the twentieth century, almost all of those who remain were born in Iraq. Assyrians living in northern Iraq today are those whose ancestry lies in the north originally. Many of these, however, in places like Berwari, have been displaced by Kurds since World War I. This process has continued throughout the twentieth century: as Kurds have expanded in population, Assyrians have come under attack as in 1933, and as a result have fled from Iraq. (Stafford, "Tragedy of the Assyrians", 1935)

Unlike the Kurds, the Assyrians scarcely expected a nation-state of their own after World War I, but they did demand restitution from Turkey for the material and population losses they had suffered, especially in northwest Iran, a neutral party in WWI invaded by Turkish forces. Their pressure for some temporal authority in the north of Iraq under the Assyrian patriarch, the Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, was flatly refused by British and Iraqis alike.

Independent Kingdom of Iraq

In 1933, the Iraqi government held the Patriarch of the Church of the East, the Mar Shamun, under house arrest. When he left Iraq to appeal to the British with regard to how the Assyrians were being mistreated in Iraq contrary to the agreement at Iraq's independence to refrain from discrimination against minorities, he was stripped of his citizenship and refused reentry.

During July 1933, about 800 armed Assyrians headed for the Syrian border, where they were turned back. While King Faisal had briefly left the country for medical reasons, the Minister of Interior, Hikmat Sulayman, adopted a policy aimed at a final solution of the Assyrian "problem". This policy was implemented by a Kurd, General Bakr Sidqi. After engaging in several clashes with the Assyrians, on 11 August 1933, Sidqi permitted his men to kill about 3,000 Assyrians, including women and children, at the Assyrian villages of Sumail (Simele) district, and later at Suryia. Having scapegoated the Assyrians as dangerous national traitors, this massacre became a symbol of national pride, and enhanced Sidqi's prestige. The British, though represented by a powerful military presence as provided by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, failed to intervene, and indeed helped white-washed the event at the League of Nations.

The Assyrian repression marked the entrance into Iraqi politics of the military, a pattern that has periodically re-emerged since 1958, and offered an excuse for enlarging conscription. The hugely popular Assyrian massacre, an indication of the latent anti-Christian atmosphere, also set the stage for the increased prominence of Bakr Sidqi. In October 1936, Bakr Sidqi staged the first military coup in the modern Arab world.

The "World Directory of Minorities" states that there are over 300,000 Chaldean Assyrian Christians in Iraq and that they live mainly in Baghdad. Until the 1950s, Chaldeans were mostly settled in Mosul -- in 1932, 70 percent of Iraqi Christians (Assyrian and Chaldean) lived there, but by 1957, only 47 percent remained, as they migrated southward due in part to violence and regional and political tensions. It was estimated that about half of Iraq's Christian's lived in Baghdad by 1979, accounting for 14 percent of that city's population

This period also marks the intensification of denominational antagonism among Aramaic speakers in Iraq as some church institutions began to distance themselves from the members of the Church of the East who were seen as magnets for Muslim antagonism. It is from this period that, as the new Mosul-born patriarch of the Assyrian Apostolic Church of Antioch and All the East (Jacobite) came into the pinnacle of this church's hierarchy, he began to move the Church away from the term Assyrian and toward the term "Syrian." At the same time, this Church moved its See to Damascus, Syria.

Republic of Iraq

Recognition of the Syriac language by the Ba'thist regime

In the eary 1970s, the Baath regime tried to change the suppression of Assyrians in Iraq through different laws that were passed. On 20 February 1972, the government passed the law to recognized the cultural rights of Assyrians by allowing Syriac language be taught schools in which the majority of pupils spoke that language in addition to Arabic. Syriac was also to be taught at intermediate and secondary schools in which the majority of students spoke that language in addition to Arabic, but it never happened. Special Assyrian programms were to be broadcast on public radio and television and three Syriac-language magazines were planned to be published in the capital. An Association of Syriac-Speaking Authors and Writers had also been established. [ [http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/CERD.C.240.Add.3.En?OpenDocument Twelfth periodic reports of States parties due in 1993 : Iraq. 14/06/96, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the Iraqi government's point of view] ]

The bill turned out to be a failure. The radio stations created as the result of this decree were closed after a few months. While the two magazines were allowed to be published, only 10 percent of their material in Syriac. No school was allowed to teach in Syriac either. [http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/archives/1999/feb22_1999.html]

Population

In modern times, Assyrians, for whom no reliable census figures exist in Iraq (as they do not for Kurds or Turkmen), have been doubly mistreated; first by their Kurdish neighbors, then by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. Assyrians were deprived of their cultural and national rights while at the same time the Ba'athist regime tried to co-opt their history. In northern Iraq today, a similar pattern is emerging as Kurds attempt to rewrite the history of the region to give it a Kurdish flavor and diminish its historic Assyrian heritage. As in Ba'athist Iraq, there is a strong tendency in Iraq today to recognize only two ethnic groups: Arab or Kurd. However, the Kurdish Autonomous Region has claimed that it has been instrumental in the renovation and support of Assyrian churches and schools.

Post-Saddam Iraq

After Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003, the Assyrian Democratic Movement was one of the smaller political parties that emerged in the social chaos of the occupation. Its officials say that while members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement also took part in the liberation of the key oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in the north, the Assyrians were not invited to join the steering committee that was charged with defining Iraq's future. The ethnic make-up of the Iraq Interim Governing Council briefly (September 2003 - June 2004) guiding Iraq after the invasion included a single Assyrian Christian, Younadem Kana, a leader of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and an opponent of Saddam Hussein since 1979.

Assyrians in post-Saddam Iraq have faced high rate of persecution by Fundamentalist Islamist since the beginning of the Iraq war. By early August 2004 this persecution included church bombings, and fundamentalist groups' enforcement of Muslim codes of behavior upon Christians, e.g, banning alcohol, forcing women to wear hijab. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3529364.stm BBC NEWS | Middle East | Analysis: Iraq's Christians under attack ] ] The violence against the community has led to the exodus of perhaps as much as half of the community. While Assyrians only made 5% of the total Iraqi population before the war, according to the United Nations, Assyrians comprise as much as 40% of the growing Iraqi refugees who are stranded in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. []

Despite the Pope's comments dying down in the media, attacks on Assyrian Christians continued and on October 9, Islamic extremist group kidnapped priest Paulos Iskander in Mosul. Iskander's church as well as several other churches placed 30 large posters around the city to distance themselves from the Pope's words. [ [http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=iraq Growing violence against Christians in Iraq] , British Church Newspaper. October 26, 2006.] The relatives of the Christian priest who was beheaded 3 days later in Mosul, have said that his Muslim captors had demanded his church condemn the pope's recent comments about Islam and pay a $350,000 ransom. [ [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/986D3437-8801-4AE2-91C1-860A42D5EB68.htm 2006] Iraq priest "killed over pope speech"] , Aljazeera.net, 12 October

Massacres and harassment since 2003

Massacres, ethnic cleansing, and harassment has increased since 2003, according to a 73 page report by the Assyrian International News Agency, released in Summer 2007. ["Incipient Genocide" http://www.aina.org/reports/ig.pdf] [Doug Bandow, "Thrown to the Lions," "The American Spectator," July 2, 2007 http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11665] [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1888848,00.html Mark Lattimer: 'In 20 years, there will be no more Christians in Iraq' | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited ] ] On January 6, 2008 (Epiphany day,) five Assyrian Churches, one Armenian Church, and a monastery in Mosul and Baghdad were coordinately attacked with multiple car bombs. [ [http://www.ankawa.com/forum/index.php/topic,157932.0.html عاجل سلسلة تفجيرات تطال كنائس في بغداد والموصل ] ] [ [http://business.maktoob.com/News-20070423135913-Churches_monastery_bombed_in_Iraq_Police.aspx Churches, monastery bombed in Iraq: Police ] ] Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi expressed his "closeness to Christians", whom he called "brothers" in the face of this "attack that changed their joy to sadness and anxiety". [ [http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1743312524 AKI - Adnkronos international Iraq: Vice-president condemns church attacks ] ] Two days later, on January 8, two more Churches were bombed in the city of Kirkuk; the Chaldean Cathedral of Kirkuk and the ACOE Maar Afram Church, wounding three bystandards. [ [http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jBZZy2XNngjtpMOUTx-Yv_ZDLutA AFP: Car bombings target churches in north Iraq ] ] Since the start of the Iraq war, there have been at least 46 Churches and Monasteries bombed. [ [http://www.aina.org/news/20080107163014.htm Church Bombings in Iraq Since 2004 ] ]

Threats on population

Leaders of Iraq's Christian community estimate that over two-thirds of the country's Christian population has fled the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. While exact numbers are unknown, reports suggest that whole neighborhoods of Christians have cleared out in the cities of Baghdad and Al-Basrah, and that both Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups and militias have threatened Christians. [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/05/A453003E-DEC4-491A-9069-81255C27A7FA.html2006] Population 'under attack'.] , Radio Free Europe] ]

The gravity of the situation prompted Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to ask Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi to take steps to protect the Christian community. Sunni imams in Baghdad have made similar statements to their congregations in Friday Prayer sermons.

Religious offical targets

Including those mentioned already, many other Assyrian religious officials have been targeted since 2003. Chaldean Catholic priest Ragheed Aziz Ganni was murdered together with subdeacons Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed after the Sunday evening Eucharist at Mosul's Holy Spirit Chaldean Church. Paulos Faraj Rahho, Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, was found in a shallow grave in the northern city two weeks after he was kidnapped. Youssef Adel, a Assyrian Orthodox priest with Saint Peter's Church in Baghdad's Karadda neighbourhood, was killed by gunmen while travelling on a car on April 5, 2008. [Christian priest shot dead in Baghdad, AFP] On April 11, President Bush was interviewed by Cliff Kincaid of the EWTN Global Catholic Network; after being informed about the detoriating situation of the Assyirians, President Bush was quoted as saying "This is a Muslim government that has failed to protect the Christians. In fact, it discriminates against them....It’s time to order U.S. troops to protect Christian churches and believers." [ [http://www.aim.org/aim-column/journalist-asks-bush-to-protect-iraqi-christians/ Journalist Asks Bush to Protect Iraqi Christians ] ]

tatistics

A 1950 CIA report on Iraq showed that Assyrians comprised 5.5% of the Iraqi population. [http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs_full.asp?doc_no=0001252339&title=%28EST+PUB+DATE%29+NATIONAL+INTELLIGENCE+SURVEY+%2D+SECTION+43+%2D+RELIGION%2C+EDUCATION%2C&abstract=&no_pages=0032&pub_date=8%2F1%2F1950&release_date=10%2F4%2F2005&keywords=NIS%7CNATIONAL+INTELLIGENCE+SURVEYS&case_no=F%2D2004%2D00234&copyright=0&release_dec=RIPPUB&classification=U&showPage=0001]

If the figures above are correct, the population of Iraq in 1950 would have been 3 million, but it was twice that.Fact|date=August 2008

The Iraqi Minorities Council and the Minority Rights Group International estimated that Iraq's pre-war Assyrian population was 800,000. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6293230.stm#graph BBC NEWS | Middle East | Crushing Iraq's human mosaic ] ]

See also

columns |colwidth=18em
col1 =
*List of Assyrian settlements
*Minorities in Iraq
*Assyrian independence
*Assyrian diaspora
col2 =
*Assyrian homeland
*East Syrian Rite
*Assyrian genocide
*Simele massacre

References