Assyrians Need Protection From Islamization and Kurdification

(29/08/2014): Assyrian refugees in Arbil
Applying for passports in preparation for leaving their ancestral homeland.
Today’s Assyrians (a historical outline)
Assyrians today are the indigenous people of what is known as “Iraq”, they belong to the historical land of Assyria (north of Iraq). Their state fell to the Persian Medes and the Chaldees in 612 BC. However, Assyrians today are distinct from their environment by their Assyrian identity, which still survives and is practiced as a form of culture (language and traditions). Their language today is “Modern Assyrian” (Akkadian with Aramaic accent influence), sometimes called “Syriac” liturgically. They were the first nation to embrace Christianity in Iraq as is cited in the First Epistle of Peter: 5-13. Assyrians today belong to several churches (put in chronological order) as follows: the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, Evangelical and Protestant churches, and the Ancient Church of the East. Their biggest population is in Diaspora because of the genocides they have been through at the hands of Kurds and Turks and Arabs. In Iraq, there are about 500000 Assyrians with the overwhelming majority dwelling Occupied Assyria (North Iraq); in Diaspora their population is estimated to be about two million. Since 2003, one million were displaced from Iraq.

The Nineveh Invasion – 2014:
Mobs collected by western powers with the help of Turkey and a few Gulf puppet-states, have assaulted the second largest city in Iraq in broad daylight, and have smoothly overtaken it after Iraq’s Army has withdrew. This army is a mere sectarian and ethnic collection of militia groups harboring hostility against each other. In the city of Mosul Sunni and Kurdish officers connected with factional agendas, command these militias.

The interests of both Arabs and Kurds converge at ISIS’s activity in Mosul because: Arab Sunni chiefs profit from weakening Al-Maliki politically, and pressurizing him internationally to force him out of premiership, while the Kurds’ interest lies in remapping Iraq, so that the Sunni area adjacent to the Kurdish occupation becomes a region of chaos, vandalized by gangs, for the benefit of Erbil which will now upstage as a “Paradise of Achievements” to a blind world. Assyrians will flee, coerced, to the Kurdish occupation region, which has remained untargeted by ISIS, and Kurds will thereby gain the ostensibly Christian West’s trust, purporting that they can save the persecuted Assyrians, and ultimately declare the kurdish occupation an independent state. USA and its followers are arming Kurds under the pretext that ISIS must be confronted, tacitly preparing them to gain military might against the Iraqi state and to impose their independence as a pro-US oil entity. In his promises to Henry Kissinger, Mustafa Barzani has always considered his future “Kurdish state” as a US state in case of independence.

The ISIS conspiracy show has been exposed ever since Mosul was handed over to them. There came Obama’s declaration that his jet-planes would interfere to ‘stop ISIS’s advance towards Erbil’ and to protect US interests, embellishing his discourse in humanitarian flavor about Izidi refugees. It is familiar that since the US set the foundation for the “New Middle East” which Condoleezza Rice spoke of to the AIPAC in June/2005, sabotage groups were established only to be eliminated once their mission is fulfilled. The USA set geographical boundaries those groups mustn’t breach. Today the USA lines boundaries for ISIS in Iraq.

The Iraqi community, on the other hand, has failed to guarantee safety for Assyrians throughout history. This can be traced back to the establishment of Iraq in 1920. Iraqi “people” has taken part in the massacres of the Assyrian Nation, or at least in displacing and plundering them. In 1933, Arab and Kurdish tribes collaborated with the government in killings and lootings. Today, the process reoccurs – as Assyrians are being driven away from Mosul and their ancient villages, they are heavily despoiled. Their bitterest enemy is not the ‘intruders’ as Iraqi media are trying to depict; it’s their Muslim neighbors.

Consequences of the Nineveh Invasion:

• On the humanitarian level: Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians and Izidis are dislodged across mountains and roads, in synchrony with Western offers annihilating the Christian Assyrians existence in the East, triggered by France’s initiative to give refuge to Assyrians on its land. France, although a permanent member of the Security Council, has never raised the Assyrian cause, nor have the French politicians discussed how to protect Assyrians in their own homeland. Such mistakes have been done by other European countries like Germany, as well as the US. Moreover, while a decisive resolution should be taken in favor of their security in their ancestral homeland.

• On the national level: This foray has brought about a feeling of distrust. Assyrians no longer trust the non-patriot Iraqi Army or the Kurdish militia, which pulled away from confronting ISIS. Both incidents prove that powers in control of Iraq do not have the capability, or even an intention, to protect Assyrians. Demographically speaking, Assyrians will prefer leaving Iraq after the many failures and in the absence of a voice to represent them at official tribunes, while Kurds have clear plans to officially control their regions in Nineveh environs in order to facilitate annexing those lands to the Kurdish occupation. Kurds have always sent their followers to international tribunes to interrupt international protection for Assyrians. “The Kurds object to establishment of a protected Christian enclave, because they want to annex the Nineveh Valley, most of whose residents are Christians” Israeli newspaper Haaretz stated in 24/12/2010.

International Protection for Assyrians:

On 9 August 2014, the Telegraph issued an article by Lord Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff in the UK. “With a potential genocide looming, we deployed 3 Commando Brigade on the ground and established a safe area. If we were prepared to go so far then, surely it is even more compelling to do so now, in alliance with the Americans?” he asks, in reference to establishing a safe haven for Kurds back in 1990.

Assyrians have asked that question for 12 years. Over 80% of the Assyrian nation in Syria and Iraq has been displaced. More than 60 churches have been demolished with Allahu Akbar calls. The entire Assyrian Triangle (between Greater Zab and Tigris) has been occupied by Kurdish intruders under the slogan ‘We are taking your lands and you can go to church as you wish’ thereby monitoring ecclesiastical Assyrian mindset (Chaldees, Syriacs, and Church of the East followers) Opposite to this, Assyrians in Diaspora are moving actively to demand international protection. Demonstrations take to the streets whose countries made up Iraq in 1921 and hideously rebuilt it in 2003 in preparation for what’s to happen today. Meanwhile Assyrians in Iraq steadfastly wait for world’s conscience to wake, to forefend the annihilation of one of the most ancient nations in the world.

What happened recently to the Assyrians is an episode in a series of a long history of persecution, an episode that is inseparable, and which shouldn’t be considered accidental or be associated to ISIS’s practices solely.

Since the establishment of the Iraqi state, developments and events have crudely contradicted all the thirty articles of the UN Human Rights Declaration. These developments corroborate that Assyrians in Iraq are not respected socially, demographically, neither culturally.

Consequently, to avoid the displacement of the Assyrian indigenous people, Iraq must become liable to international surveillance and accountability, thus saving the moral duty of the international community. Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, president of ICERD with unanimity of the members, has called in Aug/25/2014 for a special session of the Security Council to discuss establishing a safe zone in the so-called “Nineveh Plain”, located in the south of the Occupied Assyrian Triangle, under international protection.

If, as usual, international interests will conspire to render the international protection undoable, then neither Kurdish nor Iraqi protection can ever put an end to the predicament so long as both sides have always proven untrustworthy to Iraqis in general and Assyrians in particular. Eventually, it is logical that a super-power state be guardian of Assyrians, just as the US for the Kurds; and Iran for the Shiites, finally this depends on Assyrians endeavor in planning for a safer future in their hostile environment.

By Ashur Giwargis, An Assyrian activist, chairman of “Assyria Patriotic Movement”, which is aiming the international protection for the Assyrian people.