Published August 29, 2005

WASHINGTON -- In an unprecedented move, the U.S. administration is attempting to whitewash the division of Iraq's Christian ChaldoAssyrians along sectarian lines in the recently tabled Iraqi constitution. This effort, driven by Kurdish authorities, facilitated in part by the complacence of the Bush administration, only makes the U.S. guilty of aiding and abetting in the perpetuation of a Saddam era program of cultural genocide against this ethno-religious, indigenous group.
    
    Saddam Hussein and previous Iraqi regimes worked to nurture artificial rifts in the indigenous ChaldoAssyrian people of Iraq in order to dilute their ability to assert their religious, political, economic and human rights in the country. The name ChaldoAssyrian is in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) and reflects a compromise among the representative leadership of this Christian community. In the few remaining hours before the constitutional deadline, behind closed doors, Kurdish officials altered the wording in Article 122 of the constitution from ChaldoAssyrian to "Chaldean, Assyrian" as two separate peoples. This undermines the best intentions of the U.S. in Iraq vis-à-vis the most vulnerable of minorities.

    
    U.S. officials must intercede on this matter and reverse something that will entrench one of Saddam's most heinous human rights abuses, instead of abolishing it. ChaldoAssyrians are neither Arabs nor Kurds. They speak the language of Christ and have kept that language alive despite Saddam's best efforts. They are one ethnic group who are also Christians from an array of denominations. Their values are so aligned with those of Americans and other western societies that they have little trouble assimilating when forced to flee Iraq. They are the most ardent pro-democracy community in Iraq. ChaldoAssyrians are presently slated to be governed as a religious minority in accordance with Islam's principles.
    
    The U.S. must intercede and have the language corrected to reflect the Christians' ethnic unity if it wants to avoid laying the foundations for the exodus of these indigenous people from their homeland.
    
    Chaldeans are simply ChaldoAssyrians who happen to be Catholic. Through its silence, the U.S. is condoning religious-based principles of constitutionalism by identifying a people for being Catholic. This flies in the face of the very core principles the U.S. itself has been ostensibly trying to promote during the deliberations. In this framework, religion does have a place in governing people constitutionally.
    
    The impact of this is profound. It will sustain the efforts by Kurdish Authorities (already suffering a public relations disaster as their human rights violations come to light in mainstream Western media), to weaken this community in order to eliminate them politically. This will worsen the conditions they are enduring under a Kurdish drive to seize land and accelerate their refugee exodus from Iraq. In this formula, the U.S. will be presiding over something no Islamic and/or tyrannical regime could achieve for millennia: the elimination of the indigenous Christian ChaldoAssyrians from their homeland. How sad and ironic for this President and his nation, at this hour.
    
    The best reflection of the massive unrest created from this lapse by the U.S. in protecting Iraq's Christians from domination and tyranny is the outright opposition to it by the ChaldoAssyrians' only independently elected representative in the National Assembly, Mr. Yonadam Kanna. He was and remains an ardent supporter of the U.S. in its liberation of Iraq. Regrettably, even he has been expressing his total disappointment over this one central issue to the future of his people. He is also calling for immediate U.S. intervention on this matter.
    
    ChaldoAssyrians, living under Islamic domination for over a millennium, recognize that this step is against the will and decision of their people in Iraq and all over the world. At the same time it is a step to bring ChaldoAssyrians down from an ethnicity or a nation to a denomination. Then they will be dealt deal with through reference to Islamic principles and effectively become second class citizens. They will become 'ahlul dhemma' as mentioned in Islam's principles and governed as a denomination only.
    
    The ChaldoAssyrian Christian communities are protesting this move to undermine their cohesiveness as one group tied by a common language. This is unavoidably reflected in their shared language, Aramaic, the language of Christ and enshrined in Article 4(1) and 4(4) of the constitution. During the weekend, massive protest marches took place in ChaldoAssyrian towns involving the clergy and lay persons.
    
    This situation is most ironic in that much of the Bush administration's rhetoric has certainly alluded to the desire to protect religious freedoms. If these peoples' ethnic identity is torn down, so goes their ability to protect their towns and villages from encroachment by Sunni Muslim Kurds and other non-Christians. The result is already being witnessed with the growing tens of thousands who have already fled to Syria, Jordan and Turkey from northern Iraq since the liberation of Iraq.
    
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    Michael Youash is Project Director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, a Washington, DC based project focusing on the condition of minorities in Iraq's democratic transition.