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Iraq's Chaldo-Assyrians:
Canary in a Coal Mine
Hundreds of Middle Eastern-American
Christians gathered in Washington earlier this month to discuss
events in their former homelands. One of the principal organizers,
Walid Phares -- a Lebanese-American scholar and activist with
the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies -- had been working
to build such an alliance since before September 11. About three
quarters of
Middle Eastern-Americans are Christians, but, divided along ethnic
and national lines, they have had little discernable influence
on foreign policy. Now galvanized by Bush administration initiatives
promoting democracy in the region, Christians of Lebanese, Iraqi,
Syrian, and Egyptian descent have come together to find their
voice. This is a momentous time for these communities,
which are neither Arab nor Muslim. At the Friday night dinner
their enthusiasm was palpable.
Iraqi-American Christians -- or "ChaldoAssyrian
Americans," as they now prefer to be called, in recognition
of the new solidarity between their Chaldean and Assyrian churches
-- came to the Washington summit in full force. Numbering about
half a million in the United States, they are both exhilarated
and apprehensive. They are exhilarated because America liberated
Iraq after 35
years of tyranny. For the first time in that country's modern
history, the ChaldoAssyrians are now explicitly recognized and
given full rights as citizens under its basic law, the Transitional
Administrative Law adopted under Coalition auspices last spring.
This interim constitution provides them with basic rights to
religious freedom, in contrast to the stunted confinement within
church walls that characterized Christian expression during the
Hussein era. It also recognizes them as a distinct "ChaldoAssyrian"
ethnic group with full "administrative, cultural and political
rights." This generation of Iraq's native Christians are
daring to hope that there is a future for them in their ancestral
homeland.
At the same time, they are apprehensive
about the short-term survival of their community, citing church
reports that due to terrorist attacks targeting the ChaldoAssyrian
Christian community, as many as 40,000 of them have fled in the
past two months.
Iraq's Christians have long been a persecuted
and marginalized religious and ethnic minority. In August 1933,
soon after the formation of the Iraqi state, several thousand
Assyrians were massacred by the army in Semele and other villages
north of Mosul. One Iraqi-American told me he came all the way
from his home in California to the Washington conference in memory
of his great grandmother and her mother, both of whom had been
beheaded in the not-so-good old days. Over 200 Chaldean and Assyrian
villages were destroyed under Baathist rule, especially during
the Anfal campaign of 1987-88 when, as the Iraq-Iran war was
winding down, Saddam Hussein undertook a ruthless military offensive
against perceived domestic opponents in the north. In 1977, Hussein
eliminated the Chaldeans and Assyrians from the census, forcing
them to register as either Kurds or Arabs. Such attacks and relentless
discrimination between the 1960s and the fall of Hussein regime
drove a full half of Iraq's indigenous Christians into the diaspora.
An estimated 800,000 ChaldoAssyrians
remain in Iraq and constitute the country's largest non-Muslim
minority. They have found the last two months especially traumatic.
On Tuesday, according to the Catholic press outlet, Fides, Islamic
fanatics broke into a Chaldean Catholic home near Mosul and killed
a ten-year-old boy while shouting, "We've come to exterminate
you. This is the end for you Christians!" In prior weeks,
ChaldoAssyrian workers were murdered for "collaborating"
with the United States. Three others were kidnapped and beheaded.
Christian girls were assaulted with acid for not wearing the
veil. A Chaldean Catholic priest was forced at gunpoint in his
church to convert to Islam. Christian homes were targeted by
mortar attacks that
killed and injured children sleeping in their beds.
Of course, as the country's first democratic
election approaches, the security situation for everyone throughout
the country has been volatile. Many Iraqis, irrespective of religion,
have been attacked and threatened by terrorists. But Iraqi Christians
are being targeted for their faith. They worry that this may
be the beginning of either a jihad by Muslim extremists or an
ethnic-cleansing campaign by Kurds, with whom they live in close
physical proximity, or both. Their fears crystallized when five
of their churches were bombed during Sunday services on August
1. It was reminiscent of a similar coordinated bombing attack
on synagogues in 1948 -- an attack that led to the mass exodus
of Iraq's Jewish community.
Christianity in Iraq dates from the
first century and the ChaldoAssyrians are the world's last remaining
community to speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The Assyrians
are an ethnic group, the Chaldeans a religious designation; both
groups indigenous to the Iraq region, their presence there predating
Christianity. It was their ancestors who built the tower of Babel
and some people in Mosul, ancient Nineveh, continue to fast each
year in repentance as the Prophet Jonah exhorted them to do.
Most relevant for U.S. foreign-policy
considerations, the ChaldoAssyrians form one of the most politically
modern, skilled, and educated communities in Iraq today. An exodus
of these Christians would substantially reduce Iraq's prospects
of developing as a pluralistic and democratic society. Their
leaving would be not only a "brain drain" but a "sane
drain" as well. Without a sizeable non-Muslim minority,
moderate Muslims who want to keep religion out of government
-- Iraq's silent majority -- will encounter far greater intimidation
in raising their voices against the imposition of medieval Islamic
law, favored by Iranian-backed parties and clerics.
The ChaldoAssyrians are the canaries
in the coal mine for the greater Middle East as well. The extent
to which they are tolerated in the new Iraq is being watched
closely by the Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts of Egypt, and
other non-Muslim populations of the region.
Keeping the ChaldoAssyrians secure in
Iraq should be a paramount concern for the United States. One
way to help them can be found in the interim constitution. The
Bush administration had the foresight to insist on including
article 53D in the basic law -- an overlooked provision that
establishes the legal basis for creating an administrative unit
explicitly for the ChaldoAssyrians, which could serve as a safe
haven. The community needs U.S. help to create such a district,
which should encompass the traditional community villages located
near Mosul, in the Nineveh Plains. They believe that thousands
of their members who have fled to other countries in the Middle
East over the decades but are not permanently resettled could
be persuaded to return to such a secure place.
The State Department should make the
implementation of article 53D an urgent priority. It also must
start providing directly to the ChaldoAssyrians the congressionally
authorized funds needed to rebuild their destroyed villages,
roads, schools, and clinics as well as to undertake start-up
economic-development projects. Because State's funding practices
favor Arab and Kurd groups, the ChaldoAssyrians have been shut
out of U.S. reconstruction aid.
The next few months will be critical,
as the Iraqi people undertake a census, elections, and the drafting
of a permanent constitution. The State Department cannot afford
to be indifferent to the persecution facing the ChaldoAssyrian
religious minority. Doing so risks the demise of one of Iraq's
-- indeed the world's -- most ancient cultures, and it undercuts
President Bush's goal of building a more tolerant, democratic
Iraq.
By Nina Shea
National Review Online
Nina Shea is the director of Freedom
House's Center for Religious Freedom.
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