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Christians of Iraq
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Fallacy of a Kurdish Intelectual
An open letter to Diayako XaribBy: Nineb Lamassu
Dear Diayako Xarib,
I am an Assyrian born in the historical Assyrian city of Kirkuk. This great city, like every inch of Iraqi soil, is of Assyrian origin, despite the fact the names of many cities have by now been Arabised and Turkified and in the case of Kirkuk, having been corrupted from Karkha D'Beth Sluq to Kirkuk. These cities however, like the Assyrian people - the indigenous inhabitants of the land - are stubborn and steadfast in their Assyrianism.
I read your article under the title, "Is there an Assyrian cause in Iraqi Kurdistan?". I felt the title was captivating especially when I noticed that the writer had a Kurdish name. My initial feeling was that of excitement; I sincerely thought you were one of those few rational and progressive voices among the Kurdish intellectuals. But much to my dismay, I realised this sadly was not the case. The more I read your article the more I understood why you had opted for such a title. I mean when I read the title of your article I believed you would be a democratic individual who was trying to shed light on the plight of the Assyrians in northern Iraq but I was rather disappointed when I realised you were nothing but another parrot resonating the chauvinistic and feudalistic policies of those bandits that are currently running the North of Iraq.
I must commend you on your courage or more precisely your wits. For you seem to be affluent in many fields of science and scholarship. You start as a political analyst trying to scrutinise the Assyrian claims of abuse in Northern Iraq; then you present yourself as a historian of ancient history and church history, a sociologist alarming us about the assimilation of our youth in the West, a shrink who is desperately trying to analyse the Assyrian psyche, and finally, a chameleon can not hide its true colour forever: you demonstrated that you are no different than Bedirxan or Simco. In fact you are no different to the Turkish ultra nationalists that claim there are no Kurds in Turkey but mountain Turks. I mean the last paragraph of your article can not but be construed as a threatening remark and in parallel with remarks such as the following which are made by nationalist Turks which we both, Assyrians and Kurds alike, so unappreciated:
"The only nation in this country with the right to demand ethnic and religious rights are the Turks. No one else possesses this right." ?smet ?nönü
"The only master, the sole lord in this country is the Turk. Those not of Turkish descent have only one right in this country-the right to be servants or slaves. All friends and foe, even the mountains, are to know this truth." Mahmut Esat
Moreover your last statement sounds very much like the following comment made on national television by the 1980 military coup dictator, Kenan Evran, when referring to Seyfo, the genocide of 1915:
"Tell them to learn a lesson from the past or!"
Dear Xarib, you attempt to paraphrase Grant and Wigram and follow the same policy of the Baathists by adopting the idea that the notion of Assyrian, as a national and ethnic affiliation, is a recent imperialist invention, and deny the current Assyrians their historical continuation which they sacrificed everything to maintain till today, and will continue to do so.
It must be noted that when the notion of nationalism first made its way to our part of the world, it was not the Nestorian Assyrians that were the vanguards of this national awakening. It was the members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Church, which had no relations with the protestant missionaries.
There are plenty of documents indicating that after the siege of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, not only the whole city was not destroyed but its population was never totally annihilated. This is of course normal. If we compare the siege of Assyria to the German siege of Poland or the current American occupation of Iraq, we would see that: yes, the governments were toppled, and their supporters imprisoned or/and killed but the people never vanished altogether! Did the Polish people disappear after the occupation of Poland by Hitler's army; did the Iraqi people evaporate into thin air after the American occupation?! How is it then, that one is to believe that such a vast and powerful empire as that of the Assyrians lost all of its inhabitants when the capital fell!
Yes, you are right; in history we have records indicating people being referred to as Assyrians serving as able soldiers in the Persian Empire. We have Patriarchs and clergy that referred to themselves as Assyrians, such as the likes of Titian the Assyrian, and Mor Aprim of the Syriac Orthodox church. And yes, you are right, they were referred to as Assyrians because they came from a geographical land which is known as Assyria, a land which you along with the current Kurdish leadership try so hard to fabricate history and have it called Kurdistan. Thus the Assyrians did not entirely perish but remained living in their country Assyria. And yes many people were called Assyrian in history because they came from Assyria. So, you see, by your blinded hatred you are in fact strengthening the Assyrian continuation and our claim to the north of Iraq as Assyria!
Although I am an avid believer of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"; in another words, if you believe you are a Kurd then you are even if your father was an Assyrian, and if I think I am an Assyrian, then I am an Assyrian even if my grandfather was a Kurd. But just for your information and please do not perceive this as derogatory: do you have an idea how many of the Kurds are of Assyrian origin, that were forcibly Islamised and Kurdified starting from the first influx of Kurds into Assyria, right to Bedirxan's massacres and the Kurdish proactive role in Seyfo, the genocide of 1915?
Why else would Kasimlo's mother be an Assyrian, why else Masut Barazani's ancestry is of Assyrian Christian stock. Why are there so many Kurds in Turkey today still called by the Kurds, "Musilmini", why not ask the Qashura tribe what is their origin?! What I am really trying to say is: I am Assyrian not only because I think that but because I know my grandparents were not Kurdish captives which were forced to become Christians and Assyrians, but how many Kurds can prove that their parents or grandparents were not captive Assyrians which were Islamised and Kurdified. Can you?!Your claim that many Assyrians welcomed the term Christian Arabs and were active Baathists does not mean this was their fault but the policy of a Pan-Arab nationalist party such as the Baath party. What have you to say about the Kurdish Jahshiks? For example I would like to quote ?smail Be?ikçi's book a progressive Turk who is a devoted advocate of Kurdish national rights who was arrested in June 1981, and tortured by a Kurd who told him: "Now look here! There is no left or right! There is Ataturk! Come on. Write that down! Write down that everyone who lives in this country is a Turk!"
So my question is: would it be rational to condemn this Kurd or should we condemn the system which has made him more Turk than any ethnic Turk?!
Regardless, the Assyrians have never ceased demanding their rights. In fact, it is overt to the reader that it is this same fact which has prompted you to write such an article, aiming to strip them of their most fundamental right: their identity. You in fact seem to ignore the first and most horrific inhuman act in modern Iraqi history: the Assyrian massacre of 1933, which was a desperate response of the Iraqi government to suppress the Assyrian national demands by massacring innocent women and children. You also seem to neglect the fact that many Assyrians initially fought among the Kurds in Malla Mustafa Barzani's uprisings. In fact it is said that one such Assyrian was Fr. Paolos Bidaro an Assyrian priest from the Chaldean church who had joined with Malla Mustafa's forces along with many Assyrians, and only pulled away from the Kurdish movement when he asked Malla Mustafa, "what happens now about the rights of my Assyrian people?", and Malla Mustafa replied; "we carried the Burnu on our shoulders you too start doing the same.". It is said that Fr. Bidaro immediately asked for Malla Mustafa's hand so he can shake it, and when Malla Mustafa stretched his hand for him, Fr. Bidaro shook it and said, "Please accept my condolences, you have just assassinated the Kurdish liberation movement. Any nation that does not recognise the rights of another oppressed nation is not worthy of freedom.".
Your claim that abuses of my Assyrian people in northern Iraq are not because they are Assyrians is absurd. Why is it then, that Francis Yousif Shabo, an Assyrian representative in the regional government, was assassinated shortly after he demanded in a parliamentary session that the Assyrian villages occupied by the Kurds be returned to their rightful owners? And it is no secret to anyone as to who ordered the assassination and their hierarchal position in power. If the Diaspora Assyrians are on pep drugs how would you discredit Amnesty International?!
Dear Xarib, please do not patronise us by belittling the abuse we suffer in northern Iraq by blaming mobs and gangs and converting it into cases of petty crimes of some sort. We do realise in every country there are mobs and gangs, thieves, and even complete fascists; take the BNP of Briton for example. All this we can handle but what we protest about is articles such as yours which conclude in some sort of threats, and the respect the Kurds show to individuals like Bedirxan, who many Assyrians consider equal to Hitler due to his savage attacks and plunder of Hakkari Assyrians in 1843.
As to your claim that the Assyrians are very prosperous and wealthy in Northern Iraq, I would like to refer you to a quote from Frantz Fanon's book:"The people and their leaders ought to know that historical law which lays down that certain concessions are the cloak for a tighter rein."
Thus Kurdish leadership in the north is making financial concessions to the Assyrians and flooding the area with financial gains on the accounts of national aspirations. But most Assyrians are aware that the advancement of capitalist relations in northern Iraq without the presence of strong centres of opposition to conduct the ideological and political defence of the Assyrian national movement is causing the destruction of some national values. There is no such ideological and political defence because KRG undermines and prevents any true Assyrian representation by using its militia and other apparatus. Furthermore KRG prefers to deal with Assyrian stooges just like how Saddam did with Kurds during his despotic reign, and that is why we need the solidarity of progressive Kurds which I so hoped you would be representing when I first read the title of your article.Have you gone back and read your article and noticed how your psyche betrays you, and gives your interior motives away. When you are talking about the abuses of Kurds in Kirkuk, you refer to us as Assyrians but when you are describing the situation of our people in the North as prosperous you are only referring to us as Christians?! Why is that? Is it because if my people - the indigenous inhabitants of the land are to prosper in Northern Iraq they pay a price and that price is their national identity and they have to suffice with being Kurdish Christians?!
What we protest about dear Xarib, is the fact that Kurdish intellectuals such as yourself do not come to terms with their past and their nations role in eradicating the area of its indigenous people. They do not feel any moral obligation to rectify the mistakes of the past by defending and calling for the granting of legitimate Assyrian national rights in equality with their own.
I conclude by highlighting a fact that I have many Kurdish friends whom fortunately do not posses the same mentality as you. And despite the atrocities that my people have experienced at the hands of the Kurds, and what my people continue to put up with in Northern Iraq, I can never find it in my heart to deny a Kurd his/her identity and block his/her progress towards attaining their national aspirations. It is for this same reason why I expect the same equality from a Kurdish intellectual.
Thanks,
Nineb Lamassu
This is a response to Xarib's article of 13th of May 2006: HYPERLINK "http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=12331" http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=12331
Milliyet, 31 August 1930, cited in Lucien Rambout, Kurdistan, (1918-1946), (Istanbul: Komal Yayinevi, 1978), p.41.
Milliyet, 19 September 1930, cited in Lucein Rambout, op. cit., p.41.
The meaning of this is very clear, he was talking about the genocide and this was a threat to mute the Assyrian, Armenian and Greeks that were propagating the recognition of the 1915 genocide.
I am deliberately using the term Kurdish leadership because I do not believe in stereotyping. And I am positive that this sad stance of the Kurdish leadership does not represent all of the Kurdish people.
1514 the battle of Chaldiran see HYPERLINK "http://www.aina.org/articles/kurdinassur.htm" http://www.aina.org/articles/kurdinassur.htm
They were usually referred to as Raulnaye because their Episcopal was Mar. Raul.
Ba?ikçi, ?. (2004) International Colony Kurdistan, London: Parvana. p.106
A type of a shotgun
Amnesty International. (1995) Iraq: Human rights abuses in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991, London: Amensty International. p. 90
See the preface to The Charter of the National Congress of Kurdistan.
Fanon, F. (2001) The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin. p. 113
See for example: HYPERLINK "http://www.aina.org/releases/20050328112133.htm" http://www.aina.org/releases/20050328112133.htm and in the recent elections Assyrian National Conference was prevented from entering the core Assyrian villages and cities which are under KRG's control.