IRAQ’S ASSYRIANS NEED THEIR OWN REGION
EasternStar News Agency
Assyrian International News Agency AINA
May 29 2007
If a majority of the population in a country, where people with red
hair are a minority, votes for a law that forces all people with
red h! air to l et themselves be enslaved or be beheaded, is that
democracy? This is a good allegory for what Iraqi democracy today
means for the Assyrians.
The sectarian violence and the general chaos in Iraq affects all
Iraqis, regardless of their ethnicity. But the Christian Assyrians
suffer the most, because they are Assyrians and Christians. They are
Christians in Iraq where Islamic extremism, both Sunni and Shiite,
is increasing every day. Besides the sectarian persecution which
the Assyrians are subjected to, the KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party)
led KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) is systematically persecuting
and oppressing the Assyrians, which are the indigenous people of Iraq.
The purpose of the actions of the KRG is the Kurdish nationalist
ambition to take over all historically Assyrian territory in northern
Iraq. The Assyrians lack protection in today’s Iraq and suffer
non-proportionally, something that is affirmed by the fact that 40%
of all Iraqi refugees are Christians, although their numbers only
constitute 5% of the Iraqi population.
The Assyrians will never be able to live in peace, liberty and
security as equal citizens in Iraq, not among Arabs nor Kurds. The
oppression will continue until the last Assyrians have fled the
country. The only way to prevent Iraq from being entirely drained
of its indigenous people is to give the Assyrians the possibility to
create an own autonomous region on the Nineveh plains, the historically
Assyrian heartland, where the majority of the population is still
Assyrian. Self-government in an autonomy within the boundaries of
the Iraqi state is the only way for the Assyrians in Iraq to escape
the enormous pressure from the increasingly radical Muslim majority.
In an autonomous Assyrian region also Assyrians from other parts of
Iraq would find a refuge, instead of being forced to migrate through
the neighboring countries of Syria and Jordan to Europe and America.
Also other Christian Iraqis, like the Armenians, could settle there
to live in security. This would be in line with the ambition of
many European countries to make efforts on site to prevent refugee
disasters, instead of receiving the refugee streams in the camps
on home ground, with all the strains that an overused asylum process
brings with it. Many Assyrian refugees currently in Europe and America,
illegally or waiting for their asylum applications to be processed,
would move back to Iraq if they had an Assyrian region where they
could feel safe and where they could build up a life. Not to mention
the several hundred thousands of Assyrian refugees in Jordan and Syria,
waiting for a chance to get to Europe.
If a safe haven is not created for the Assyrians in Iraq within a near
future, Europe and America should be prepared for an enormous refugee
stream the coming decade, to be compared to a full scale evacuation
of the Assyrian population of Iraq. The Assyrians should be prepared
for a definite and final extinction from their historical lands. The
world should be prepared for the termination of one of the worlds
oldest civilizations after a continuous presence of five thousand
years in Mesopotamia.