Assyrians Face Genocide in Iraq

For ethnic Assyrians, who are being attacked by genocidal forces in the Middle East, these are surely the worst of times.

But it was not always so. Long ago, Assyria was a mighty kingdom based in Mesopotamia. And the story of Assyria, recounted in the Bible, is a colourful thread in the tapestry of world history.

The Assyrian empire, like all empires, crumbled and disappeared into the mists of time. But the descendants of the empire have cleaved to their ethnic identity and somehow managed to survive multiple attempts to wipe them out.

Many Assyrians have fled persecution in the Middle East, finding safe haven in North America and Europe. However, the hearts of many Assyrians remain in the Middle East. And Iraq holds particular meaning for most.

Although Iraq is a Muslim-majority country, it is the ancestral home of the Assyrian nation, which existed long before Islam was established. The vast majority of Iraqi Christians are of Assyrian ethnicity.

The Assyrians were among the first people to embrace Christianity, and they continue to speak a form of Aramaic, one of the languages likely spoken by Jesus Christ.

Many ethnic Assyrians identify themselves by religious denomination, Chaldean Catholic. According to CNEWA-Canada, a Catholic nongovernmental organization (NGO), approximately 66% of Assyrian Christians belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. The rest of the Assyrian community belong to other denominations.

The right to freedom of religion has been under heavy attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Without Saddam to keep a lid on Islamic extremism, it has been open season on Assyrians.

Religious tax

Assyrians in neighbouring Syria are also under siege from violent extremists, who appear determined to cleanse that war-torn country of the ancient community.

Last month, Islamic State forces abducted at least 220 Christians from villages in northeastern Syria, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). The United Kingdom-based human rights group reported that four Assyrians were released from captivity on March 3. The previous week, 19 other Christians were released by the terrorists after a ransom was paid.

According to CSW, “a Daesh (Islamic State) religious court ruled on 28 February for the release the 19 hostages in exchange for a sum of money paid for each family as tax for non-Muslims.”

Although CSW welcomed the release of some of the hostages, it condemned the imposition of an Islamic tax. “While we are relieved to hear of the release of these hostages, it is worrying that they have been made to pay an unjust tax enforced by non-nationals in order to continue living in their ancestral homes,” CSW’s chief executive Mervyn Thomas said in a news release.

The imposition of a tax on non-Muslims is nothing new in the Muslim world. During Islam’s heyday centuries ago, Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule were forced to pay a “jeziya” or religious tax.

Fast-forward to 2007. At the height of the U.S. troop surge that spring, a Sunni mosque issued a fatwa or religious edict that demanded Christians pay a jeziya. If Christians failed to comply, stated the fatwa, they would be forced out of Baghdad’s Dora district, which was eventually cleansed of Christians.

That incident angered Nina Shea, who, at the time, sat on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent human rights panel established by Congress in 1998. In a 2008 telephone interview, Shea expressed outrage that the U.S. military “didn’t do anything to protect them (the Christians in Dora district).”

“There was no demand to hold this mosque accountable by (U.S.) military forces,” Shea said. “I think it was a perfect example of how the United States could have made a difference.”

Slow-motion genocide

Last summer, Islamic State forces overran the traditional lands of the Assyrians on the Nineveh Plain, displacing at least 120,000. Since then, the jihadist militia has taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria, generating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

What is happening to the Assyrians in Iraq is slow-motion genocide. And for the better part of a decade, human rights activists have been warning Washington of catastrophe.

Back in 2006, prominent Assyrian-American activist Rosie Malek-Yonan testified before a U.S. Congressional committee about the unfolding genocide.

“Despite being the indigenous people of Mesopotamia, Assyrians are discriminated against and threatened as unwanted guests in their own homeland as they face the threat of yet another modern day ethnic cleansing of nearly a century ago executed by the then Ottoman Turks and Kurds,” Malek-Yonan told the Congressional Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations.

“It is estimated that if things continue to proceed as they are right now, within 10 years the Assyrian population of Iraq will be eradicated because of ethnic cleansing, forced exodus and migration,” Malek-Yonan testified.

Nine years later, events are unfolding as predicted by Malek-Yonan.

According to a recent report produced by a coalition of humanitarian NGOs and underwritten by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada as well as the European Union, “Iraq’s Christian community reportedly numbered around 1.4 million or even more in the 1990s.”

“Today, Christian leaders put the size of their community at approximately 350,000” stated the report, entitled Between the Millstones: The State of Iraq’s Minorities Since the Fall of Mosul.

Despite ample evidence, the Bush administration steadfastly refused to acknowledge that the Assyrians were being pummelled by Islamists, terrorists and criminal gangs.

“It’s not about which group is killing the Assyrians,” Malek-Yonan said in a 2007 email. “It’s about the ethnic cleansing of Assyrians to rid Iraq of that nation.”

Under international law, the United States, as the military occupier of Iraq, had a legal obligation to protect vulnerable minority communities. Yet, both the Bush and Obama administrations failed to do so in the case of the Assyrians.

Similarly, the international community has a legal duty, under the Canadian-inspired UN Responsibility to Protect doctrine, adopted by world leaders in 2005, to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass civilian death.

It is clear that the Iraqi federal government cannot and will not protect the Assyrians. And too much blood has been spilled for the Assyrians to ever trust their Muslim neighbours again.

Although the United States considered partitioning Iraq in the post-Saddam era, the Bush administration opted to keep Iraq together. The time has come to reconsider carving up Iraq into separate religious and ethnic nation-states.

There is precedent for such a bold move. In 1991, Saddam used poison gas against the Kurds. In response, the U.S. set up a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds.

In addition, the international community sanctioned the establishment of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which has become, in effect, an independent nation-state.

The U.S. and a coalition of allies should use air power and ground forces to carve out an Assyrian self-governing territory on the Nineveh Plain. An Assyrian nation-state would ensure the survival of the ancient civilization and would almost certainly attract people of Assyrian heritage from around the Middle East, Europe and North America.

© 2015 Assyrian International News Agency.