By WorldWatch Monitor
Zara Sarvarian
Samir Gedhya never wanted to leave his home in Qaraqosh for the unknown, even when the Islamic State group was almost at his doorstep, sweeping through the towns of Iraq. As the menace to Qaraqosh loomed, his eldest son Faraj, then 16, decided to flee to France, entering by a hazardous and illegal boat journey with the aim of later seeking to move his family there. Samir and his wife, Shaymaa, decided they would take the longer, safer and legal route to France together with their two younger sons.
Zara Sarvarian
Samir Gedhya never wanted to leave his home in Qaraqosh for the unknown, even when the Islamic State group was almost at his doorstep, sweeping through the towns of Iraq. As the menace to Qaraqosh loomed, his eldest son Faraj, then 16, decided to flee to France, entering by a hazardous and illegal boat journey with the aim of later seeking to move his family there. Samir and his wife, Shaymaa, decided they would take the longer, safer and legal route to France together with their two younger sons.
Just before IS penetrated Qaraqosh in August 2014, the Assyrian
Christian family fled to Erbil Governorate, finding themselves on the
streets of the city of Ankawa without a roof over their heads. After a
week, they arrived at Mart Shmoni refugee camp, which hosted 15,000
people, then moved onto Ankawa shopping mall, which had opened its doors
to 4,000 refugees. Years later, the memory of scabies, a contagious
skin infection that had spread throughout the mall, makes Samir’s body
crawl, even though he did not contract it.
In February 2016, upon being granted official permission, the family
travelled to France and stayed there almost two years. Then, after
Qaraqosh was liberated from IS and it was deemed to be safe to return,
they packed their bags and made their way home. Faraj chose to remain in
France.
“In December 2017 we returned to ‘our Holy Land’, Qaraqosh,” says
Samir. “We were expecting to witness a disaster created and left by IS.
However, when we entered our city, I was re-born and I still have that
feeling. I could not sleep properly even a single night in France. I
don’t regret that we returned at all.”
Of 12,000 families that left Qaraqosh, just less than half (5,700)
returned. The city, also called Baghdeda in the Syriac language, used to
be home to 50,000 Assyrian Christians (97 per cent of the city’s
population) before the invasion of IS. Amidst razed churches and
ransacked dwellings, these people seek to resurrect their normal lives.
Their principal concern has continuously been security.
When IS attacked their towns, this ancient Christian minority in Iraq
felt betrayed by everyone, from the Iraqi army to the Kurdish
Peshmerga, who abandoned the Nineveh Plains to their Muslim neighbours,
many of whom collaborated with IS, Samir believes.
“In the Bible Jesus said: ‘You will be hated because of me’ and they
showed that we were hated because we are Christians,” says Samir, “Our
Muslim neighbours, who participated in the looting of our houses and who
cooperated with IS, now seem to feel guilty. They reassure us that they
are not part of it anymore.”
Caught between IS and its supporters, Assyrians realised that the
only succour they would receive was from their own people. In the autumn
of 2014, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), a Christian
Assyrian security force, was created to resist IS.
The 500 men
The security of Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq, as well
as of neighbouring Bartella and Karamles, is now managed by the NPU’s
500 soldiers. All of them are residents of the Nineveh Plains and
members of the Chaldean and Syriac Churches. The NPU fought alongside
the US-led coalition and Iraqi forces in the liberation of the Nineveh
Plains.
“There are thousands who want to volunteer to serve in the army but
the Iraqi government does not give permission,” Athra Kado, the Media
Director of the NPU, told World Watch Monitor. “If the security of a
town or a village is not controlled by our people, we cannot trust them;
we don’t trust the government.”
Samir says that his middle son, Yousif, 18, is on his way to join the
NPU. The only Christian army unit in Iraq embodies the hope of
Assyrians for a safer and more secure future.
Passive persecution
Lack of trust in the Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) has always been an issue for the Assyrian community.
“If the level of trust towards the authorities was very low even before
the IS invasion, now there is no trust whatsoever,” Afram Yakoub, a
board member of the Assyrian Confederation in Europe, told World Watch
Monitor.
He pointed to the various sectors in which he says Iraqi Assyrians
face neglect and discrimination on a daily basis, from education and
employment to the judicial system.
“The general trend is that there is no basic democracy: Assyrians and
other minorities are left outside of decision-making processes in the
Nineveh Plains, even though they are the majority,” said Afram Yakoub.
“Assyrians don’t get government jobs; Assyrian schools never receive the
full funding they are entitled to or the textbooks they need; the water
and electricity supply is weaker for the Assyrian community; foreign
aid that is pouring into Northern Iraq is not handled by Christians and
is somehow directed to non-Assyrians.”
The areas governed by the KRG see the authorities passively resisting
judicial verdicts made in favour of Christians by neglecting to
implement them, he says. Alongside its policy of ‘Kurdification’ of
Northern Iraq, the KRG also imposes a curriculum upon Assyrian schools,
says Yakoub. He describes this as ‘humiliating’: “For example, in
history books there is a chapter where the Kurd Simko Agha, who
assassinated the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East during the
Assyrian genocide immediately after the First World War, is presented
as a hero.”
Discrimination against Christian women is not brazen but it does
exist: the concept of ‘honour and shame’ and other Islamic practices are
indirectly imposed on Assyrian women as well, Yakoub explains.
A dream that unites
Approximately half a million Assyrians, out of a global population of
1.5 million, live in Europe today. The Assyrian Confederation of Europe
not only co-ordinates donations and other support from the Assyrian
diaspora to Assyrians in Iraq and Syria, but it also pursues a political
agenda. This involves attempts to influence powerful countries to put
pressure on the Iraqi government to grant the Nineveh Plains the status
of an autonomous Assyrian administrative province.
Assyrians believe
that only autonomy with an Assyrian governor would guarantee the
continued existence of the indigenous Assyrian community in the Nineveh
Plains, so that the decisions concerning various aspects of their lives
are made by “their people”.
“Our ethnicity and our Christian identity are interconnected,” says
Athra Kado of the NPU. “We can’t practise Christianity if we don’t have
our language and our land. We don’t want Kurds or Arabs to get involved
in deciding our destiny, nor do we want them to fight with each other to
get the Nineveh Plain. Historically, it belongs to Assyrians and
Yazidis.”
This campaign, however, has stalled. “We have had zero results so
far,” says Afram Yakoub of the Confederation. “Influential countries are
not interested in us.”
For now, this Christian community clear the rubble from the streets
left behind by IS, re-build their houses and outline their plans for the
Nineveh Plains.
“My life is now here,” says Samir, a father of three sons. “I wanted
to come back so much. I wanted to live my traditions, with my people.
There is so much beauty around me, despite the ruins.”
Background
The Assyrian population in Iraq is mainly concentrated in the Nineveh
Plains region, Northern Iraq, which is considered the original Assyrian
homeland. This distinct, indigenous ethnic group are descendants of the
ancient Assyrian Empire, which collapsed between 612 BC and 605 BC, and
speak an ancient language termed ‘Assyrian’, ‘Syriac’, ‘Aramaic’ or
‘Neo-Aramaic’.
Christianity spread in the Assyrian nation shortly after its rise.
They have established five Eastern Churches at different points in their
history: the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Church of the East,
Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, and Syriac Orthodox
Church. The majority of Assyrians who live in Iraq today adhere to the
Chaldean and Syriac Churches.
An estimated 300,000 Assyrians lived in Iraq before IS’s invasion.
They have a significant presence in north-eastern Syria, around 400,000
before the recent civil war started in 2011, mainly concentrated in the
Hasaka Governorate.
Under the Arab nationalist Ba’ath Party regime of Saddam Hussein,
this Christian minority was intermittently subjected to persecution of
varying degrees. This included the targeting of Assyrian towns and
villages during the al-Anfal military campaign against Kurdistan in
Northern Iraq between 1986 and 1989, and after the US invasion of Iraq
in 2003.
The Assyrian Democratic Movement, an ethnic Assyrian political party
established in 1979 in Iraq, holds two seats in the KRG parliament and
two seats in the Iraq parliament.
A number of forces are involved in the security arrangement of the
Nineveh Plains: the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Iraqi army and the NPU.