Forget 2007 - for Iraqi Assyrians this is 6757

Middle East Times
Abdulhamid Zebari
AFP
April 9, 2007

ARBIL, Iraq -- Descendants of Iraq's ancient Assyrians are enjoying 12 days of parties and parades to celebrate their New Year, a pagan rite that glorifies resurrection and life and dates back millennia.

Forget 2007 - this is 6757 for Assyrian Christians whose ancestors carved the cradle of civilization, ruling the magnificent Assyrian and Babylonian empires before scattering into an ever-dwindling minority across the Middle East.

Flocking to the relative haven of Iraqi Kurdistan rather than the ancient capitals of Nineveh and Babylon, which are awash with violence in modern-day Iraq, Assyrians began the most important event in their calendar April 1.

Wearing colorful traditional dress, men, women, and children parade through the streets and dance, hailing the arrival of spring, budding trees, and blossoming flowers in early seasonal warmth before the punishing heat of summer.

"We will celebrate for 12 days as we did in Babylon and Ashur," said Nissan Beghazi, chairman of the Assyrian Cultural Center in the city of Dohuk, which is this year a focal point of celebrations for the first time.

Officially banned by successive regimes in Baghdad, including under the late Saddam Hussein, Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq have openly celebrated their new year in autonomous Kurdistan since the 1991 Gulf War.

"Celebrations are being held in Dohuk with people coming from Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk. For security reasons it was difficult to do that on the Nineveh plain," said Akad Murad, spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

The festivities began April 1 with a parade outside the Virgin Mary Church in Dohuk - a far cry from the private and secretive manner in which Assyrians say greetings were exchanged under Saddam.

Holding flags and colorful feather plumes, men in black hats thronged the streets with women kitted out in traditional beaded headdress and flowered dresses, as onlookers and their children looked on.

The traditional lineup also includes parties and gathering to listen to poets who recite the story of creation.

Another custom still practiced in Chaldean-Assyrian villages is planting wheat or barley seeds in vases some weeks before April, putting them on the window sill, and watching seedlings grow as a symbol of new life.

"After the March 1991 uprising, our people resumed celebrations on this historic day after years. In 1992, the Kurdish parliament decreed April 1 an official holiday, but it hasn't been implemented," said Berghazi.

But behind the festivities lie fears for the future in a country where mass emigration has badly hit the Christian minority that enjoyed a relatively protected status under Saddam.

"Our celebrations this year come with our people facing killings, kidnappings and displacement. Our cultured and skilled people are facing the brunt of this violence," said a statement from the so-called Mesopotamia Federation.

Mass emigration has seen Iraq's Christian community slump to around 600,000 out of a total population of 27 million.

The same Christian organization also expressed hope that Christian migrants would return one day to live with the rest of their Iraqi brethren in peace.

Two elderly Christian women, one in her 80s and the other in her 60s, were shot dead when gunmen broke into their house in Kirkuk late last month in the restive northern oil capital.

Until the Assyrians converted to Christianity in the 1st century and accepted the Gregorian calendar, they celebrated March 21 - a date still marked by Kurds and Arabs, and Iranians as new year or the start of spring.