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ASSYRIAForgive me for going a little off of the beaten path. While my family is from Iraq, as Assyrians, our history has much less to do with the general trajectory of Iraq and much more to do with our own people and their triumphs and failures rather than those of Iraqis in general. For Europeans and Americans, perhaps the best way to understand this would be to compare us to the Jews, where the particular country in which they lived was much less important to their identity than their Jewish community and the history of that community.Ancient AssyriaPrisoners from the Town of Alammu, Sennacherib's PalaceDescription of ImageThis is a relief from the Palace of Sennacherib, King of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and one of the most famous Kings of the Ancient Assyrian People. His soldiers and people were known for their excessive brutality and incredible strength. In the relief, the three rightmost-persons are Assyrian soldiers returning from the Conquest of Alammu, an unknown village likely close to the Turkish/Iranian border. Behind the Assyrian soldiers are a stream of captives coming from the city. In the Assyrian soldier’s hands were heads of enemies who were decapitated.Further BackgroundAssyria known for being a violent and virulent empire based in the northern part of Mesopotamia. Ancient Assyria’s Ashurnasirpal II (not the more famous Ashurbanipal of two centuries later), wrote about his exploits here:“I flayed as many nobles as had rebelled against me [and] draped their skins over the pile [of corpses]; some I spread out within the pile, some I erected on stakes upon the pile ... I flayed many right through my land [and] draped their skins over the walls.”“I felled 50 of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them, [and] defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops. ... With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool, [and] the rest of them the ravines [and] torrents of the mountain swallowed. I carried off captives [and] possessions from them. I cut off the heads of their fighters [and] built [therewith] a tower before their city. I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.”“In strife and conflict I besieged [and] conquered the city. I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword ... I captured many troops alive: I cut off of some their arms [and] hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears, [and] extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one pile of the living [and] one of heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city.”Albert Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, Part 2: From Tiglath-pileser I to Ashur-nasir-apli II (Wiesbaden, Germ.: Otto Harrassowitz, 1976), pp. 124–127.Mind you, these were his own words about what he did, so this is not some foreigner bemoaning the fate of his own people and wanting to paint Ashurnarsipal II as needlessly cruel. Ashurnarsipal II was proud of his actions here.Ashurbanipal, the most enlightened and peaceful ruler of Assyria, had this lovely segment from his royal annals:“Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs, swine, wolves, and eagles, to the birds of heaven and the fish in the deep.... What was left of the feast of the dogs and swine, of their members which blocked the streets and filled the squares, I ordered them to remove from Babylon, Kutha and Sippar, and to cast them upon heaps.”Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 2 vols. (Chicago Univ. of Chicago Press, 1926–1927), vol. 1, secs. 795–796.Ashurbanipal even smashed the crypts of those rulers who in death defied him and his rule.The Assyrian Empire is the origin of our people, but, of course, Assyrians do not claim that these people were angelic. What Assyrians prize in their ancestors from this time was their ability to unify cultures, laws, and organizational systems. They built the largest empire for their time and took down many enemy civilizations. However, on the question of morality, Assyrians would have a “Come-to-Jesus” moment that really defined their Culture.Assyrian Church of the EastMor Gabriel MonasteryDescription of the ImageThis is the oldest and one of the most important monasteries in the Syriac Orthodox Church. Mor Gabriel Monastery was built on the Tur Abdin (ܛܘܼܪ ܥܒ݂ܕܝܼܢ ) plateau near Midyat in 397 C.E. It currently sits in southeastern Turkey’s Mardin Province.Further BackgroundThe greatest cultural shift in the history of the Assyrian people was the conversion of the members of the empire to Christianity. Assyrians consider themselves to be one of the first peoples to convert to Christianity with the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East founded by Apostles Thomas, Thaddeus and Bartholomew themselves.Within less than a century after the first Koine Greek versions of the New Testament, the Assyrians produced the Peshitta (ܦܫܝܛܬܐ) or the Syriac Bible, which was a translation of the Septuagint and the New Testament from Koine Greek into Syriac. It is the foundational text of the Assyrian Apostolic Church and all other Assyrian churches. The need to study this book and create learned theologians led to the creation of one of the world’s first universities: the School of Nisibis (ܐܣܟܘܠܐ ܕܢܨܝܒܝܢ‎) in 358 C.E.The Church would reach its height in the 7th and 8th centuries as members of the Assyrian Church of the East missionaries reach China, Japan, and India. In 781 C.E., the Chinese Tang Dynasty carves the Nestorian Stele in both Syriac and Chinese to commemorate Christianity in China. Even the Mongolian script is derived from Sogdian which was itself derived from the Syriac script.Islamic ConquestArp Aslan leading the Seljuks to victory in the Battle of Manzikert of 1071Description of the ImageThis is Seljuk leader Arp Aslan leading the conquest of eastern Anatolia for the Türkic Seljuk Empire in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which was a huge defeat for the Byzantine Army and led to central regions of Assyria falling under Islamic hegemony. In particular, the city of Marida (now known in Turkish as Mardın) which had served as the episcopal sees of several Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean churches, fell to the Seljuk Turks (led by Alp Arslan) after this battle.Further BackgroundThe southern parts of Assyria in modern Iraq and Syria fell to Islam rather early in the history of Islam. Arab conquests under the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates brought these territories under the Islamic thrall. This meant that discriminatory legislation against Christians and other minorities was implemented, giving rise to the Ahl ad-Dhimma System (also known as Dhimmitude).They were sets of laws designed to make the ruling ethnic group distinguished legally, socially, economically, and politically from the classes over which they ruled through the use of discriminatory tactics.Under the Ahl ad-Dhimma System, Jews and Christians were required to pay additional taxes, required to wear certain forms of dress, required to join only a set list of occupations, had their ability to work in the government circumscribed, were forbidden to possess weapons, would be judged in Islamic Courts for any crime involving a Muslim (even if the Muslim was the perpetrator), and numerous other restrictions on life. Jews and Christians were confined to certain areas. The “ghetto” in Christian Europe was replicated by the “mellah” in the Islamic World.Jews and Christians were forbidden from proselytizing their religions (although, admittedly, Jews do not proselytize). They were also effectively forbidden from creating new houses of worship. Christians also had to watch as numerous important churches, including the Hagia Sofia, the most important church in all of Orthodoxy, were turned into mosques. Muslims had no restrictions on proseltyzation. In many cases, in addition to the financial, social, and political incentives to be gained through conversion, a convert to Islam could legally inherit all of his family’s wealth.Arabization and TurkificationOnce the Seljuks conquered northern Assyria and the Arabs had conquered southern Assyria, the processes of Arabization and Turkification began, designed to turn Assyrians from Aramaic-speaking Christians into Arabic or Turkish speaking Muslims. Unfortunately, many Assyrians began to convert to Islam in order to avoid jizya and kharaj taxes and other forms of repression.In so doing, they lost their connection to the Assyrian community. Many of the descendants of these Assyrians are part of the Iraqi and Syrian Sunni Arab population today or part of the modern Turkish population. Once they were effectively cut off from the Assyrian communities, they stopped learning Aramaic as a separate language and simply spoke the prevailing language of their region. They were Arabized or Turkified.Before anyone suggests that these terms are “made-up”, they actually exist in Arabic (Ta’arib - تعريب) and Turkish (Türkleştirme) as descriptions of the actions taken to assimilate Non-Arabs and Non-Turks to Arab and Turkish identity.The real tragedy of Arabization and Turkification is that it would be the sons of Assyrians who would then be those to engage in genocide of the Assyrian people. It was not foreign marauders who were never connected to our community who butchered it, but our own sons and daughters, raised to hate their own ancestry and history.Assyrian Genocide - SeyfoDescription of the ImageThis a pastiche of pictures from the Seyfo or Assyrian genocide, when Assyrians were hounded out of dozens of cities in eastern Anatolia by Turkish forces and in which hundreds of thousands of Assyrians were brutally murdered. In the upper right-hand picture, we can see a “civilized” Turk from the CUP playing with food in front starving Assyrians who had already lost everything. In the other two pictures, we can see soldiers standing above the murdered people.Further BackgroundThe Assyrian Genocide or Seyfo was part of the larger Committee of Union and Progress Party policy of removing the Christian presence from Anatolia as part of the nationalistic Turkish movement. This is why the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians, collectively the Christians of Anatolia, were extirpated from their land, massacred, and forced to flee into the desert. It had little to do with fears about Russia and much more to do with implementing a genocidal dream. The CUP believed that Anatolia should a Turco-Muslim region and that the presence of Christians with a Non-Turkish, Non-Muslim identity would be unsuitable for such a state.The Seyfo was perpetrated by the CUP with assistance from Kurdish militants and destroyed the Assyrian population. The most conservative estimates put the death toll at 100,000 Assyrians, Assyrians claim that 750,000 died, and most people who study the genocide place the number around 250,000. Regardless, this was a massive blow to the community and some have claimed that over half of all Assyrians were killed in the genocide. Many Assyrians fled the region to seek safety in the Diaspora. Thus began the trend which would be fully “realized” by the beginning of the 21st century, where the majority of Assyrians would be living in exile from our historic homeland.However, the Assyrians were specifically NOT targeted by the CUP-issued deportation laws because no link between the Assyrians and Russians could be clearly made. The orders for Assyrian extermination came from local governors and mayoral groups. The massacres, however, do have a genocidal character since local administrators like Rashid Bey in Diyarbakır (name anachronistic) made sure to systematically eliminate the Assyrians.To this date, Turks and the Turkish government continue to deny the Seyfo without any coherent reason or rationale. Faced with such overwhelming evidence of Turkish malfeasance in regards to the Assyrians and without a clear scapegoat like “Russian cooperation”, Turks have either (1) engaged in full-scale denialism or (2) actually have recognized the genocide academically. In the former category, you have individuals like Turkish historian Bülent Özdemir, who has claimed that the entire genocide is a fabrication designed to forge a modern Assyrian identity. (This is a perfect mirror of Holocaust denialism.) In the latter category, you have Turkish journalist Mehmet Alaca who uses the term Seyfo, the Assyrian term for the genocide, who admits that tens of thousands of Assyrians were intentionally killed. (Admittedly, his number is an order of magnitude too small, but some recognition is better than none.)Assyrians in IraqDescription of the ImageThis is a picture of the Assyrian Levies, who were Assyrian soldiers in British-organized units in Iraq. Here, they are relaxing with their British commander Major Prescott in the Iraqi part of the Syrian Desert.Further BackgroundAfter the Seyfo, in Iraq, there were additional attacks on Assyrians. The Iraqi Army, led by Iraqi Arabs used the increased power given by the British to Iraqi Authorities in 1933 to launch a massacre of the Assyrians in the north. Thousands of Assyrians were killed in around thirty different small towns. This genocide has been termed the Simele Massacre and led to increased flight to the Diaspora. The date of the Simele Massacre, August 7, 1933, is preserved as Assyrian Martyrs’ Day.King Ghazi I had pro-Nazi sympathies and supported the Simele Massacre against the Assyrians in 1933 (which was a genocide against my people). He also wanted to annex Kuwait to Iraq, showing an expansionist view and actually invited a coup d’état to overthrow the British-created civilian government. Fearing increased violence and wanting to protect our homeland, my uncle Petros joined the Iraq Levies in 1934, which were a British-led Army that would defend the territory. So many Assyrians joined the Levies, that they were jokingly called the Assyrian Levies. The Assyrian Levies proudly fought alongside the British against the Nazi-Aligned Iraqi Arabs.Under Saddam Hussein, in the 1970s and 1980s there was an explicit attempt to Arabize the north, especially the major cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, where the majority populations were Non-Arab. Assyrians, Kurds, Turcomans, Yazidis, and other minorities were kicked out of their homes and lucrative incentives were provided for Arabs to take these “unoccupied dwellings” and resettle the regions. Assyrians, who had been a majority in the Ninevah Plains and had a large minority in Mosul were effectively kicked out of the city entirely.Islamic State GenocideDescription of the ImageI guess I cheated here, but I wanted to show the two faces of Assyrian resistance to Islamic State. The first picture is an Assyrian protest demanding an end to the genocide and freedom for the Assyrian people. The image below is the Dwekh Nawsha (ܕܒ݂ܝܚ ܢܦ̮ܫܐ‎), an Assyrian militia that has fought for the freedom of the Assyrian people, in parallel with the Kurdish Peshmerga.For those who do not speak Arabic, I will translate the protesters’ signs:(Right-Side)We do not fear those who kill our bodies | We do not fear those who destroy stone [buildings] | Assyrians…and we will be victorious(Left-Center-Side) — It appears that the left-most sign that is cut-off says the same things.Assyrians…Our Blood Rises | Assyrians…Our Voices Rise | The Assyrian YouthFurther BackgroundSince the American Invasion of Iraq, the situation for Assyrians has deteriorated. There were numerous attacks against Assyrians from Sunni and Shiite militia groups. However, when Islamic State invaded Iraq in June 2014, the level of violence increased dramatically. The Assyrian communities in Iraq and Syria where directly controlled by Islamic State and they offered three choices to the Assyrian people: (1) Flee or Die, (2) Pay an Exorbitant Jizya Tax, (3) For those who cannot pay, the women will be taken as sex slaves and the men butchered.The Islamic-State-led genocide of the Assyrian people and the Assyrian extirpation from their land has led many Assyrians to flee their homeland and others to protest or defend their fellow Assyrians on the ground. As Islamic State is on the retreat, there is a small hope for the Assyrians to regain their homeland and rights. However, given the lack of international support for an independent or autonomous Assyria, even among their so-called allies in the Iraqi Kurdish government, the Assyrian future in their homeland is far from certain.