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The ChaldoAssyrian Cause in Iraq:
Implications for Maronites
John C. Michael, MD
Assyrian Academic Society
Presented at the
National Apostolate of Maronites
Convention
Orlando, Florida
July 16, 2004
http://www.bethsuryoyo.com/
The ChaldoAssyrians (also known as
Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs)
are the indigenous people of
Mesopotamia and have a history
spanning over 6700 years. Today's
ChaldoAssyrians are the descendants
of the ancient multiethnic Assyrian
empire and one of the earliest
civilizations emerging in
Mesopotamia. Although the Assyrian
empire ended in 612 B.C., history is
replete with recorded details of the
continuous persistence of the
ChaldoAssyrian people till the
present time. Assyrian civilization
at one time incorporated the entire
Near East most notably the area of
the Fertile Crescent.
The heartland of Assyria lays in
present day northern Iraq,
northeastern Syria, southeastern
Turkey, and northwestern Iran. The
remains of the ancient capital of
Assyria, Nineveh, lie next to Mosul
in northern Iraq. Until earlier this
century prior to the ChaldoAssyrian
Holocaust of 1915, the major
ChaldoAssyrian communities still
inhabited the areas of Tur Abdin and
Hakkari in southeastern Turkey,
Jazira in northeastern Syria, Urmi
in northwestern Iran, and Mosul in
northern Iraq as they had for
thousands of years.
The world's 4.5 million
ChaldoAssyrians are currently
dispersed with members of the
Diaspora comprising nearly one-third
of the population. Most of the
ChaldoAssyrians in the Diaspora live
in North America, Europe and
Australia with nearly 400,000
residing in the United States of
America and 200,000 in Europe. The
remaining ChaldoAssyrians reside
primarily in Iraq, Syria, and
Lebanon and to a lesser extent in
Iran, and Turkey.
ChaldoAssyrians constitute the third
largest ethnic group in Iraq. They
represent the historically
indigenous people of the region.
Estimates of the total
ChaldoAssyrian population in Iraq
range between 1.5-2 million people.
Most ChaldoAssyrians currently in
Iraq reside in and around the
Baghdad area with 750,000- 1,000,000
ChaldoAssyrians within central Iraq.
An additional 300,000-400,000
ChaldoAssyrian reside within the
area in and around Mosul (ancient
Nineveh). Approximately 100,000
ChaldoAssyrians reside in the former
northern UN Safe Haven. Another
community of ChaldoAssyrians
numbering in the range of 25,000
resides in Karkuk while the
remainder of the population is
scattered in smaller concentrations
in the remainder of the country. Due
to disproportionate emigration,
ChaldoAssyrians from Iraq constitute
the largest group of Iraqis in the
U.S. with estimates ranging between
80-90%.
ChaldoAssyrians are not Arabs but
rather have maintained a continuous
and separate ethnic identity,
language, culture, and religion that
predate the Arabization of the Near
East. Until today, the
ChaldoAssyrians speak a distinct
language (called Syriac or Aramaic
by some scholars), the language
spoken by Jesus Christ. As a Semitic
language, the ChaldoAssyrian
language is related to Hebrew and
Arabic but predates both. The Syriac
or Aramaic language of the
ChaldoAssyrians remains the oldest
continuously written and spoken
language of the entire Middle East.
The ChaldoAssyrians were among the
first people to accept Christianity
in the first century A.D. through
the Apostle St. Thomas. Despite the
subsequent Islamic conquest of the
region in the seventh century A.D.,
the various ChaldoAssyrian Churches
flourished and their adherents at
one time numbered in the tens of
millions. ChaldoAssyrian missionary
zeal was unmatched and led to the
first Christian missions to China,
Japan, and the Philippines. The
Church of the East stele in Xian,
China bears testament to a thriving
Church of the East as early as in
the seventh century A.D.
Early on, ChaldoAssyrian Christians
developed into two ancient branches,
the Syriac Orthodox Church and the
Church of the East. Over time,
divisions within Eastern
Christianity led to the
establishment of various Syriac
Churches including the Chaldean
Church, the Assyrian Church of the
East, the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac
Catholic Churches, the Syriac
Maronite Church, and the Melkite
Churches. Persistent persecution
under Islamic occupation led to the
migration of still greater numbers
of Assyrian Christians into the
Christian autonomous areas of Mount
Lebanon as well. With the arrival of
Western Protestant missionaries into
Mesopotamia, especially since the
nineteenth century, several smaller
congregations of Assyrian
Protestants arose as well. Over the
course of several centuries, some
ChaldoAssyrians came to identify
themselves by these varying but
closely related names.
Despite some differing
self-identifications,
ChaldoAssyrians still overwhelmingly
consider themselves one people
irrespective of whether they refer
to themselves as Assyrians,
Chaldeans, or Syriacs. In the 2000
U.S. Census, mainstream
organizations from the different
communities including the Assyrian
Universal Alliance (AUA), the
Assyrian American National
Federation (AANF), the Chaldean
Federation of America (CFA), and the
Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA)
endorsed the
Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriac category
that tabulated all respondents as
one people independent of their
preferred term of
self-identification. Letters from
the Bishops of the Chaldean, Syriac
Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, and
Syriac Maronite Churches encouraged
their parishioners to support the
unified category in order that all
segments of the community are
tabulated together.
A direct consequence of
ChaldoAssyrian adherence to the
Christian faith and their missionary
enterprise has been persecution,
massacres, and ethnic cleansing by
various waves of non-Christian
neighbors which ultimately led to a
decimation of the ChaldoAssyrian
Christian population. Quite
tragically, Great Britain invited
the ChaldoAssyrians as an ally in
World War One. The autonomous
ChaldoAssyrians were drawn into the
conflict following successive
massacres against the civilian
population by forces of the Ottoman
Empire consisting of Turks and
Kurds. Although many geopolitical
and economic factors were involved
in provoking the attacks against the
ChaldoAssyrians, a jihad or "holy
war" was declared and served as the
rallying cry and vehicle for
marauding Turks, Kurds, and
Persians. Although the Muslim holy
war against the Armenians is perhaps
better known, over 750,000
ChaldoAssyrian Christians died by
outright murder, starvation, disease
and the all too familiar
consequences of genocide between
1914-1923 during the ChaldoAssyrian
Holocaust along with a significant
number of Pontic Greeks.
The conflict and subsequent
ChaldoAssyrian Holocaust led to the
decimation and dispersal of the
ChaldoAssyrians. Those
ChaldoAssyrians who survived the
Holocaust were driven out of their
ancestral homeland in Turkish
Mesopotamia primarily toward the
area of Mosul Vilayet in Iraq,
Jazira in Syria, and the Urmi plains
of Iran where large ChaldoAssyrian
populations already lived. The
massacres of 1915 followed the
ChaldoAssyrians to these areas as
well, prompting an exodus of many
more ChaldoAssyrians to other
countries and continents.
The ChaldoAssyrian Holocaust of 1915
is the turning point in the modern
history of the ChaldoAssyrian
Christians precisely because it is
the single event that led to the
dispersal of the surviving community
into small, weak, and destitute
pockets. Most ChaldoAssyrians in the
Diaspora today can trace their
emigration from the Middle East to
the ChaldoAssyrian Holocaust of
1915. Many who fled from their
original homes into other Middle
Eastern countries subsequently, just
one generation later, once more
emigrated to the West. Thus, many
ChaldoAssyrian families in the West
today have experienced transfer to a
new country for three successive
generations-beginning, for instance,
from Turkey to Iraq and then to the
United States.
On account of the ChaldoAssyrians
siding with the victorious Allies
during World War One, Great Britain
had promised the ChaldoAssyrians
autonomy, independence, and a
homeland. The ChaldoAssyrian
question was addressed during
postwar deliberations at the League
of Nations. However, with the
termination of the British Mandate
in Iraq, the unresolved status of
the ChaldoAssyrians was relinquished
to the Iraqi government with certain
minority guarantees specifically
concerning freedom of religious,
cultural, and linguistic expression.
Many of the ChaldoAssyrians
surviving the Holocaust had been
gathered in refugee camps in Iraq
pending final resettlement in an
autonomous ChaldoAssyrian homeland.
In 1933, however, the Iraqi
government declared an ultimatum
giving the ChaldoAssyrians one of
two choices: either to be resettled
in small populations dispersed
amongst larger Muslim populations
that had recently been violently
antagonistic or to leave Iraq
entirely. Some ChaldoAssyrians chose
to leave to neighboring Syria and so
notified the Iraqi government of
their intention. In response, the
Iraqi government dispatched the
Iraqi army to attack the
ChaldoAssyrians fleeing into Syria.
In their subsequent defeat, the
retreating Iraqi army massacred over
3,000 ChaldoAssyrian civilians in
Simele and other surrounding towns
in northern Iraq in August of 1933.
Upon his return to Baghdad, the
commanding officer ordering the
massacre was hailed as a conquering
hero. Thus, the first official
military campaign of the Iraqi army
served as the newly independent
government's final solution to the
ChaldoAssyrian question. The
demoralized ChaldoAssyrian refugee
population in Iraq was thereby
resettled in dispersed villages
while the other surviving isolated
communities languished in the areas
of Tur Abdin, Turkey; Jazira, Syria;
and Urmi, Iran. The lessons of World
War I remain fresh in the
ChaldoAssyrian psyche. On the one
hand, deep apprehension about the
peaceful intentions of our neighbors
is coupled with profound suspicion
about the reliability and commitment
of Western powers.
The Baathist government of Iraq was
not any more sympathetic to
ChaldoAssyrians. Under Saddam
Hussein, over 200 ChaldoAssyrian
villages were razed in northern Iraq
in order to resettle ChaldoAssyrians
into urban areas such as Baghdad in
a bid to better assimilate and
"Arabize" the population.
ChaldoAssyrians were denied
recognition as an ethnic minority
and instead categorized as Christian
Arabs. The Iraqi state routinely
interfered in Church matters.
Eventually, one Assyrian Patriarch
(of the Assyrian Church of the East)
left Iraq under intense pressure and
settled near Chicago, thereby moving
the Holy See outside of Mesopotamia
for the first time in nearly 2000
years. Under the Baathist regime,
Koranic instruction was also
introduced into school curricula. In
1984, dozens of ChaldoAssyrian
activists were imprisoned and three
leaders of the Assyrian Democratic
Movement (ADM) were hanged in an
attempt to squelch a burgeoning
ChaldoAssyrian awareness.
Following the first Gulf War, the
ChaldoAssyrian experience in the
Kurdish occupied Northern provinces
or UN administered "Safe Haven," was
not significantly better. In the
Northern provinces, Kurdish tribal
and feudal groups occupied
ChaldoAssyrian areas and
expropriated over 50 villages in
whole or in part. Overly proactive
ChaldoAssyrian leaders were
assassinated as in the example of
Francis Shabo, a ChaldoAssyrian
Member of Parliament in the Kurdish
Parliament of northern Iraq from the
ADM who had been assigned the task
of adjudicating land disputes
between ChaldoAssyrians and Kurds.
According to Amnesty International,
Mr. Shabo was killed by the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
headed by Mazsoud Barzani. Similar
to their Baathists neighbors, the
Kurds denied ChaldoAssyrians their
ethnicity and referred to them as
Christian Kurds.
Within the northern area, however,
the ChaldoAssyrians were able to
establish political parties, who, as
long as they did not threaten
Kurdish occupation of the Northern
provinces, were able to operate
schools, and, to a limited extent,
administer some reconstruction and
humanitarian aid projects. Also,
during that time, the ADM was able
to transform from an underground
clandestine political organization
into a legitimate political party
free of direct Iraqi government
threat although the threat from the
KDP remained. Through the assistance
of other affiliated political
organizations in the US known as the
Assyrian Coalition, as well as
through the direct lobbying efforts
of the Assyrian American League
(AAL); the ADM gained legitimacy in
Washington DC as the official
representative of the ChaldoAssyrian
people in Iraq. In the lead up to
the second Gulf War, the ADM was
included in opposition meetings
consisting of the eight major
opposition groups and was included
by the US government in the Iraqi
Liberation Act. Mr. Yonadam Kanna,
the Secretary General of the ADM,
was included as the sole
ChaldoAssyrian member of the 25
member Iraqi Governing Council.
In a historic first, the ADM along
with the Assyrian Democratic
Organization (ADO) on October 22-24,
2003 cosponsored a conference
referred to as the Chaldean Syriac
Assyrian General Conference in
Baghdad to declare the political
aspirations of the ChaldoAssyrian
people of Iraq. Among the diverse
list of attendees was Dr. Imad
Chamoun as the representative to
Maronite Patriarch Sfeir. The
conference affirmed that the various
names of Chaldean, Syriac, and
Assyrian refer to one people. "Due
to the pressing need imposed by the
critical situation that our people
and cause are going through, the
Conference highlights the importance
of concurrence on one unified
national appellation." The
Conference attendees "agreed on
appellation of 'ChaldoAssyrian' to
designate our people and the
appellation of 'Syriac' to designate
our language and culture to be
incorporated into the Constitution."
Furthermore, on a political level,
the Baghdad Conference "stressed the
need to designate an administrative
region for our people in the Nineveh
Plain with participation of other
ethnic and religious groups, where a
special law will be established for
self-administration and the
assurance of administrative,
political, cultural rights in towns
and villages throughout Iraq where
our people reside." Referring to
past policies of resettlement and
destruction of villages, the
Conference also stressed the redress
of such policies that "altered the
demographic structure of several
regions that belonged to our people.
1957 Census and earlier should be
used as benchmarks." The conference
also demanded the right of return
for Iraqi ChaldoAssyrians.
From October to March,
ChaldoAssyrians mobilized to meet
the challenge of incorporating their
political platform into the
Transitional Administrative Law
(TAL) -- the presumed precursor of
the future Iraqi Constitution. The
final version of the TAL left
ChaldoAssyrians both hopeful and
apprehensive. On the one hand, the
TAL was an historic first in the
modern history of Iraq since
ChaldoAssyrians were recognized as
an ethnic minority as an integral
part of the Iraqi mosaic including
among others Arabs, Kurds, and
Turkman. Notably, they were
recognized as one people with the
combined name declared by the
Baghdad Conference. Also, in line
with the Baghdad platform, the TAL
stated in Article 53, paragraph D
"This law shall guarantee the
administrative, cultural, and
political rights of the Turcomans,
ChaldoAssyrians, and all other
citizens." The TAL also established
the legitimacy of the Iraqi Property
Claims Commission which may
potentially allow the resettlement
of ChaldoAssyrians as well as other
displaced people to their original
homes and villages.
The TAL, however, left some cause
for concern as well. First, the
reference to ChaldoAssyrian rights
was vague and did not specify a
territory -- namely, the Nineveh
Plain. Secondly, the TAL
acknowledged the KRG's effective
control and occupation of the three
northern provinces of Arbil, Dohuk,
and Sulmaniyah including additional
areas in Nineveh, Kirkuk, and Diyala
provinces. Dohuk, Nineveh, Kirkuk,
and Arbil provinces include many
ChaldoAssyrian towns and villages
with Nineveh and Dohuk including the
bulk of the Assyrian heartland.
Especially, troubling in the context
of rising Islamic fundamentalism was
the TAL's recognition of Islam as
"the official religion of the State
and is to be considered a source of
legislation." Moreover, "No law that
contradicts the universally agreed
tenets of Islam, the principles of
democracy, or the rights cited in
Chapter two of the Law may be
enacted during the transitional
period. This law respects the
Islamic identity of the majority of
the Iraqi people and guarantees the
full religious rights of all
individuals to freedom of religious
belief and practice."
With the handover of sovereignty in
June, the US sponsored UN resolution
1546 recognizing the legitimacy of
the interim Iraqi government did not
include the TAL. However, it is
believed that much of the TAL will
remain an important starting point
for the upcoming constitution
following general elections.
In summary, ChaldoAssyrians would
like to see a democratic and secular
Iraq with proper recognition of
Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs as a
unified indigenous people of Iraq.
ChaldoAssyrians aspire to have the
same political rights as other
constituent groups at a minimum,
such that autonomy granted to some
groups should be afforded
ChaldoAssyrians within the Nineveh
Plain as well. There must be a
proper accounting of ChaldoAssyrians
both within and without Iraq coupled
with a genuine right of return.
There must be equitable allocation
of the nation's resources and
reconstruction aid to allow
necessary infrastructure aid to
allow infrastructure development and
rehabilitation of destroyed
villages.
Moving forward, the remaining
challenges include formulating an
Iraqi constitution that preserves
the gains of the TAL -- namely
recognition of ChaldoAssyrians as a
people -- while specifying the
rights and geography of the
ChaldoAssyrian self-administered
area. Serious problems that remain
include rising Islamic
fundamentalism, growing Kurdish
hegemony, concern over increasing
emigration, fair and equitable
appropriation of reconstruction and
development aid to ChaldoAssyrian
areas, internal sectarian and
name-based tensions, and,
American/Western resistance to
helping ChaldoAssyrian Christians
out of concern over an Islamist
backlash.
Now, why is the ChaldoAssyrian cause
important to Lebanese Christians in
general and Maronites in particular?
Change is coming to the entire
Middle East and the first stage of
that change has begun in Iraq.
Successes and failures of minorities
i.e. ChaldoAssyrians in Iraq will
have profound reverberations
throughout our communities in the
Middle East, especially in Lebanon
and Syria. The federal model of
democracy with emphasis on a
self-administered area is the only
model that can help ensure the
cultural survival of the various
communities of
Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs in the
Middle East. In Iraq, the emphasis
on the Nineveh Plains where our
villages and towns still remain must
be internationally sanctioned by law
in order to allow the language,
religion, culture, and geography to
survive intact.
Maronites and Lebanese Christians as
a whole face similar challenges that
ChaldoAssyrians are now
experiencing. We all are concerned
with Islamic fundamentalism,
demographic and political hegemony
(albeit from different groups), the
need for fair and equitable economic
development and reconstruction,
internal sectarian tensions (even
within Christians groups), and a
growing realization that the
"Christian" West has been reluctant
to advocate on our behalf out of
fear of alienating the regional
Muslim majority. Finally, we all
face the prospects of increasing
emigration from our homelands and a
potentially overwhelming challenge
to register and count all of our
people in the diaspora.
We share a common history, culture,
religion, Syriac language, and, at
one time, a contiguous geography.
But most importantly, we share an
intimately tied future fate. When we
ignore the dire situation of one of
our communities in the region, we
diminish from our own interest and
magnitude as a people. We must now
begin to present ourselves to the
world as a people with a regional,
international problem rather than as
isolated groups with internal
domestic problems.
Though many of us believe we are
indeed one people, we must not
delude ourselves that this has been
universally adopted by all of our
people. However, from a simply
strategic and tactical perspective,
we cannot allow the beatings and
disappearances of Lebanese students,
as one example, to be viewed by the
world community as an internal
Lebanese affair anymore than we can
allow the loss of another
ChaldoAssyrian village in northern
Iraq to be so seen. We need to
evolve to a level of cooperation
where any such instance in one area
draws criticism from all of our
groups.
A practical approach to allow us to
develop such communication and a
common understanding involves
increasing contacts between our
leaders and people at such
conventions and meetings as these.
Organizing joint conventions and
symposia will help to "connect the
dots" of our various scattered and
isolated communities and increase
cross pollinization of ideas and
strategies. Such approaches will
send the signal to our neighbors as
well as the world community that we
are linked as a regional issue, not
simply an internal domestic
nuisance. Sponsoring research,
position papers, research centers,
and think tanks through the
collaborative efforts of our
organizations at the academic level
will also have a synergistic effect.
Organizing joint delegations of our
leaders to our governments and
representatives in the diaspora as
well as to international
organizations on the political level
will undoubtedly augment our
standing.
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