Massacres of Christians in Iraq Prove Need for Independent Aramaean Christian State in Iraq, Syria

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
The recent news of continued massacres of Christian Aramaeans in Mosul was the reason for which I made a flashback in my memory, and thus checked what I had suggested in an article published in Buzzle in the first days of 2005, almost 4 years ago.

In that article (11 January 2005), under the title ´The 27 Key Points for US Success in Iraq´, I demanded the formation of an independent Aramaean Christian in Iraq, in order to save a millennia old nation that has been repeatedly pushed to exodus over the past 120 years. I feel safe to claim that if the US had implemented the bold proposals included in that article, there would have been peace for all today in Mesopotamia and millions of people would not have been forced to migrate.

As that article hinges on issues of historical continuity, national integrity, and cultural authenticity, I republish it integrally. Today, four years later, I have nothing to change, not a single iota, but certainly the project would be far more difficult to materialize now, 4 years later.

However, the concept of the Aramaean Christian independent state in Mesopotamia (parts of Iraq and Syria) is key to issues of nation-building throughout the plagued land that has been the Cradle of the Mankind. Before my article, I republish the reports first published in the Aram Nahrin Aramaean website about the recent massacres of Christians in the Iraqi North.

Iraq: The Bloodshed of Aramean People and Bombardment of Churches Continues Undiminished.

http://www.iraqichristians.org/English/Arameans_Iraq_killing_Mosul_Qaraqosh_15_11_2008.htm

Two Killings in Mosul and Bomb Attack in Baghdeda (Qaraqosh)

The Aramean blood continues to flow in Iraq. And the bombardments on their sacred buildings with the aim to intimidate and expel them from their indigenous land, Aram-Nahrin, is repeating with the regularity of clockwork.

On 12-11-2008 two sisters were killed in Mosul. The sisters belonged tot a West- Aramean Syrian Catholic family in Mosul. A group armed terrorists entered a house in the Alkahira district in Mosul and killed two sisters Lamia and Walaa Sobhy Salloha in cold blood. After the brutal killings of the sisters, the terrorists put a bomb in their home which was detonated at the arrival of the police. Two policemen were killed and few of them were wounded.

End September a mass exodus of Arameans took place from Mosul because of killings, threats and intimidations by fanatics or political groups. More than 10.000 Arameans left Mosul, around 1500 families, for more secure surrounding villages. Lately, around 700 families returned back to Mosul after security guarantees by local and central authorities.

With the recent killings of the two Aramean sisters, the terrorists seem to signal the Aramean Christians that they are not welcome in Mosul, in spite of the security guarantees.

Bomb Attack on the West-Aramean Syrian Orthodox Mor Gorgis Church in Qaraqosh (Baghdeda)

On 13-11-2008 a car bomb was detonated in front of the West- Aramean Syrian Orthodox Church Mor Gorgis in Bagdeda (Qaraqosh), in the Nineve Plain. Twelve people injured; fife of them were military of Iraqi army. The terrorists seem to signal the Arameans that nowhere in Iraq they are safe. The message the terrorists seem to convey is that the Arameans, including “Assyrians” and Chaldeans, should keep quite and in no way should start to talk about their rights, in spite of the fact that they are the original inhabitants of this part of the world.

The Aramean nation in Iraq, also made know as “Assyrians” or Chaldeans, is targeted by terrorists, political groups, ordinary criminals and thieves who misuse the current chaotic situation in Iraq to terrorize our nation. Because of insecurity, terror, killings and extortion, an important part of Aramean people have left Iraq for countries like Syria and Jordan. The list of killed Arameans is long, it includes clergy as well as laymen, amongst others:

Gunmen Kill 2 Christian Sisters in Iraq

By Edward Yeranian Cairo

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-11-12-voa12.cfm

12 November 2008

Iraqi police say gunmen they identify as Islamic extremists shot and killed two Christian sisters while storming their house and rigging it with explosives in the war-torn northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The mother of the two women was also wounded, as Edward Yeranian reports for VOA from Cairo.

Christian families in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul are the focus of violence targeting their once-prominent community.

The extremists shot and killed the two Christian sisters, and police say they then wired the home with explosives. The explosives detonated later when a squad of Iraqi police was sent to investigate the crime. Several of the policemen were wounded by the blasts.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees says more than 12,000 Iraqi Christians have fled Mosul after numerous kidnappings and killings, and threats made against them.

U.S. military forces and their Iraqi counterparts are waging an intensive campaign against al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in a battle to restore normalcy to the beleaguered city.

An operation called “Mother of Two Springs,” an allusion to the Arabic name for Mosul, began last spring and picked up intensity in mid-October.

Mosul lies between northern Iraq’s Kurdish region and the Sunni Arab heartland, and there is communal friction as well as violence from Islamic extremists aimed at U.S. and Iraqi forces.

One U.S. officer told Reuters news agency that the violence in Mosul resembled what was going on in Baghdad 18 months ago, before security was improved in the capital city.

Iraqi officials have repeatedly pledged to help protect the tiny, beleaguered Christian community in Mosul, but large numbers continue to flee to Kurdistan and elsewhere as Monsignor Paul Dahdah, the Apostolic Vicar in Beirut reveals. He says that he saw a family from Mosul that had fled the city for Lebanon in order to seek refuge, either in Beirut or to get a visa for a third country. The mother made it to Lebanon, via Syria, with her two children, he adds, but her husband was kidnapped and no one knows what happened to him.

The plight of Iraqi Christians has prompted the Vatican and other Christian organizations to lobby several Western governments for political and military action to protect the small remaining group of Chaldean Christians, Armenians, and Catholics.

But Monsignor Dahdah thinks more must be done. He says church leaders must insist that much more be done in terms of security in order to stop the exodus that has befallen the Christian community in Iraq, reducing their numbers to less than half their pre-2003 levels.

Dahdah blames the United States for the bad security situation in northern Iraq and thinks it is the United States’ responsibility to restore order to Mosul.

New Anti-Christian Attack in Mosul, Two Sisters Killed

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=13732&geo=23&size=A

12-11-2008

Eyewitnesses say the gang that carried out the attack was made up of men ranging in age from 16 to 18. Attackers killed the young women in cold blood then placed a bomb at the entrance of their house, killing two policemen when it went off. Sources tell AsiaNews that the violence is tied to an ongoing “power struggle” ahead of upcoming provincial council elections.

Mosul (AsiaNews) – Mosul Christians have been attacked again today. A group of armed men stormed a house in the Alqahira neighbourhood where they killed two sisters in what amounts to targeting killing. After entering the building the gunmen shot the two young women in cold blood and wounded their mother with a knife. At present she is in hospital but her conditions are not serious. The husband and the son were able to escape at the start of the attack.

The victims are Lamia Sobhy Salloha and Walàa Sobhy Salloha, both from the Syro-Catholic Church of Mosul. The two young women were employed by the Office of the Treasurer of the Municipality of Wala.

According to eyewitnesses the attack was carried out by a gang of 16-to18-year olds who after attacking the residents of the house placed a bomb at the entrance and detonated it when a group of police agents came to the scene, killing two and wounding others.

A source told AsiaNews that “youth gangs from poor families” were involved in the incident but that behind them there is “a criminal organisation” that is doing everything to drive Christians out of the city.

“It is over power and the next election to provincial councils and minority representation, which might be decisive for the balance between Arabs and Kurds,” said the source.

Urged by the United Nations, the government had promised to put art. 50 back into a draft law to guarantee minorities 15 seats out of 440 (13 for Christians). But on 3 November parliament passed the bill without doing so, which later received the necessary sanction by the Presidency Council to become law with only one seat set aside for Mosul Christians. The parliament´s decision has embittered the leaders of the Iraqi Church who slammed the blatant violation of the constitution which should ensure equal rights for all citizens.

“We don´t trust anyone. Both Arabs and Kurds promised to help us but so far we have not seen anything concrete,´ the source told AsiaNews. Today´s attack was “another warning by those who want to force Christians into the Niniwa Plains.”

In recent days more than 700 families had decided to come back to Mosul after local authorities promised to provide them with greater protection. This targeted killing “will push Christians to flee again” and threats of new attacks and violence will continue to hang over the few who remain.

“It is all a political game but it is Christians who are the losers,” said the source.

Today´s attack is but the last in a series of acts of violence against Mosul´s Christian community which has been targeted by Islamic fundamentalists and armed gangs alike.

Since the start of October, 16 people have died and 2,000 families (about 12,000 people) have left the city.

Matters had begun to get better in recent days, hence the decision of 700 families to come back; however, today´s attack will cast an even greater shadow on the fate of Iraq´s Christian community. (DS)

The 27 Key Points for US Success in Iraq

By Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-10-2005-63962.asp

The American administration must not seek impossible solutions in Iraq; as a non-colonial power, the US cannot just replace Britain or France in areas of the colonized Middle East. The US must bring down the colonial structures, and firstly the ominous Arabic nationalism. Mesopotamia is falsely called ‘Iraq’, and the local Arameans were never Arabs

The 27 Key Points for US Success in Iraq

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

There are basic mistakes in the American (I mean the governmental) approach to Iraq.

The present administration failed to realize the following basic parameters:

1. Iraq does not exist, it never did! After 1258 (destruction of Baghdad) the area belonged to various successive administrations with faraway capitals (Istanbul). Earlier, Baghdad did not rule the area of that land but a much larger one. As concept, Iraq is a colonial technical entity, nothing more.

2. America is a non-colonial country; either its policies will reflect this (as abnegation of the entire colonial approach to the Middle East) or simply America will fail. By its nature, America cannot be France or England – in their stead. The ideological content (non-colonial in the case of the States) predestines the political form (and targets).

3. Consequently, the only way for America to be successful in Iraq is that America shapes a genuinely new – non-colonial as it fits America (and as is the wish of so many colonized peoples allover the world, and more specifically of the Iraqis) – policy for the area of that technical entity that does not and cannot exist as such outside colonial environment.

4. A genuinely non-colonial approach would use as a tool, and rather focus on UNESCO, not the UN itself.

5. A genuinely non-colonial approach would first take into consideration that nothing can keep so many different peoples together. Kurds have nothing to do with Arabic – speaking populations, Aramaeans aspire to their free country, Turkmens want to be closer with Turkey, and of course Shia and Sunni can be united only for terrorist purposes, not for the average citizen´s prosperous perspective.

6. Since there has been a total lack of democratic culture, any majority in Iraq (and this is only Shia) will behave dictatorially, if free elections offer the opportunity – which is not permissible for any democratic intention and approach to that area. Democracy is NOT a totalitarian rule of the majority.

7. America must understand that its non-colonial nature must lead its administration to non-colonial type of impact / interference.

8. The only way to destroy the colonial structures in that land is to bring forth a genuine, local rejection of these structures, be they known to the local peoples or not (if they are not, and truly speaking they are not at all, this is the result of colonial disinformation and educational-academic-intellectual machinated guidance, which means more work for America!).

9. Local rejection of the colonialism means definitely return to 1917, before the arrival of the British forces at Basra, and then at Baghdad, and commitment to ameliorate the then prevailing situation.

10. There was no local identification with any sort of Arab nation and/or nationalism (that are both a colonial – disreputable and criminal – fabrication) before 1917 in that land, so Arabic nationalism of any form and expression must be totally uprooted from Mesopotamia, a land that was never ‘Arabic’.

11. The only chance for America to obtain a success in Mesopotamia is to diffuse unbiased, non-colonial History, Culture, and Education throughout that land, and make it be reflected at the social and political levels.

12. The only chance to get it done is to separate various populations through mass transfers, and to delineate territories for the Kurds, the Turkmens, the Aramaeans, the Shia Arabic speaking, and the Sunni Arabic speaking.

13. These constituencies must start functioning as different cantons according to the Swiss model.

14. Americans should concentrate their efforts on the Arabic speaking constituencies-to-be (Shia and Sunni).

15. Education must prevail over barbarism (and this concerns mostly the Arabic speaking populations that have been victimized as engulfed in tenebrous ignorance and fanaticism), and in this regard History must be taught properly. The Arabic speaking populations are Aramaeans and not Arabs. It must become clear to the entire world and to all the modern Mesopotamians that linguistic Arabization – as a consequence of the islamization – means nothing in terms of genuine ethnic and cultural identity, tradition, and expression.

In the same way African origin Americans, who are born in the States as English native speakers, are NOT Anglo-Saxons or Indo-Europeans, the Arabic speaking populations of Mesopotamia are NOT Arabs. They are Aramaeans, who got linguistically arabized.

16. Sunni or Shia Arabic speaking populations must understand that liberation from Saddam Hussein is only a tiny success story, if compared to the ultimate liberation from the colonial chains. America can help in this regrad. Self-knowledge is what is mostly needed in this regard.

17. Syriac Aramaic must be imposed as national language along with Arabic, and must become an obligatory course throughout Primary and Secondary Education addressed to Arabic speaking people of Mesopotamia. Aramaic speaking Aramaeans of Mesopotamia will teach Aramaic the Arabic speaking Aramaeans of that land. This is the only way for exit.

18. The name of the country must be its authentic one – as in Syriac Aramaic: Aram – Nahrain (Mesopotamia).

19. Americans must understand that deportation is conditio sine qua non for an ultimate success in Iraq, and actually it was always part of Mesopotamian politics and practices. Deportation was decided and imposed upon Greeks and Turks (and it did concern millions of people in 1923 – 1925) following the terms of the Lausanne Treaty; so, what is the point of avoiding and even ignoring this solution now for Iraq?

20. Deportation must take place not only in delineating Kurds from Turkmens, and Aramaeans from Arabic speaking, but also within the constituencies where any form of terrorist act and/or group rebellion is to be attested.

21. Necessarily, the entire country is to be reshaped, so progressive elements have to be separated from radical and terrorist extremists. Zones must be made everywhere, kept isolated, and then controlled and crosschecked house by house. The choice must be personal and nominal.

22. Any person or family that denies to accept and contribute to the aforementioned process of educational de-arabization and re-aramaization has to be transferred to special camps for compulsory works of public infrastructure and reparation.

23. De-arabization must go in parallel with a re-spiritualized, re-‘intellectualized’ and re-civilized Islam. All Mesopotamian Muslim intellectuals, who have the intention to participate in such a great work, must meet in an extraordinary Conference, set up ideological pillars, and develop a great variety of modern approaches to and interpretations of Islam that will be the only permitted to be diffused through any sort of meeting within a mosque and a medresa (religious school).

24. Neoterisms must certainly be introduced in this regard, and the main Sermon (Khutbah) of the Friday Prayer must be retransmitted by radio and/or TV set throughout all the mosques of the country. Like this, only one top religious leader will be allowed to give a speech, and none else. This leader´s Sermon will be heard (and watched) by all the Muslims in all the mosques of Mesopotamia.

25. The US Administration must understand that the Lerna Hydra Americans face in Iraq has three heads: French Colonialism – Arabic Nationalism – Islamic Extremism. The first head fabricated the second, and contributed – through machinations – to partly shaping and to successfully canalizing the third. The tripartite communicating vessels (rather call it a monster) must be totally broken down, if success is still a target in Mesopotamia.

26. Americans must understand as early as possible (and this already means yesterday) that the ideological creature of France was not opposed by the British. So, it is omnipresent on the territories the French wished it diffused. It is meant to keep the local peoples in permanent underdevelopment and confusion, ignorance and fratricide strife, colonial dependence and cultural alteration. But it is also meant to make any foreign intruder, who would jeopardize the global interests of colonial France, fail. It is not military might that will guarantee for the American administration the ultimate success; it is high intellect, unbiased historiography (in the way of Martin Bernal, who demolished the Colonial Greco-Romano-centrism of France in his celebrated ´Black Athena´), and rich conceptual thought. It is not just a coincidence that all sorts of bad intentions have been directed by the French against the Aramaeans of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar and the Emirates.

27. Ultimately, the average American – misinformed through the pitifully silent mass media, namely the likes of New York Times and the Washington Post – must come to learn what the French colonial diplomats and academicians do not want him to know with respect to the deep back thoughts of the Arab nationalist and Islamic extremist groups that currently practice Anti-American terrorism in Mesopotamia (and elsewhere):

These groups – all – believe that we are living at the end of times (Al Yom Al Ahar) and that the long awaited Saviour, the Islamic Messiah, named Al Mahdi (the Guided One), will appear very soon to coordinate efforts with Jesus (in Arabic: Isa), conceived as Islamic Prophet and not as Messiah or God, against America and Europe, i.e. the entire system of the Western World that they consider as the Realm of the Antichrist (key notion for the Islamic concept of the End of Times, Masih al Dajjal in Arabic).

They view their fight as sacrifice that earns them a ticket for the Paradise, and they believe that the expected events are imminent and encompassing great natural disasters. More they keep the Americans busy, greater their contribution to the ´forthcoming´ arrival of Al Mahdi is.

Theirs is a completely erroneous interpretation of the Coran and the Hadith, but this is all they believe and they care about.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/82583