The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Stepping Back From it All

Stepping Back From it All
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Thursday, April 12 2007, 0:35:11 (CEST)
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There’s so much information contained in Dr Joseph’s book and most of it new to me, as well as challenging, that at times I need to step back and try to see the entire picture.

The Assyrian Empire, as an empire and even a kingdom, came to an end. The people, however, did not immediately and physically disappear. Rather they blended in with the people of the succeeding powers as well as into the general flux of the Aramean culture and language which in time permeated and influenced the entire region and the various ethnic groups therein. Through the centuries religious affiliation became far more important than any one national consciousness, indeed this was the glory and promise of the Christianity that Arameans adopted: that people the world over would become brothers and sisters under Christ.

Within the Parthian and Sasanian Empires the Aramean Christians found refuge, although this calm was disturbed when the Romans, enemies of the Persians, converted to Christianity. However things improved when the Aramean Christians, for political reasons, chose to identify themselves with the Nestorian heresy, making no more appeals to the Greek Orthodox Church, thereby allaying the suspicion of their Persian overlords.

Under the Sasanians the millet system was first inaugurated in which religious minorities could be ruled by their own ecclesiastical leaders. The conquering Arabs continued the use of this system so that even with the variously applied restrictions and limitations placed upon them as a Christian minority, they were allowed to survive, protected, among Muslims… free to practice their religion.

The Ottoman Turks, who next ruled that region, allowed things to go on as they had in the two main districts of their empire where Nestorians lived i.e. in the Hakkari mountains and north of the Mosul Villayet. The Persians also allowed the Nestorians of Azerbaijan and the Lake Urmia region to be ruled in such a manner. However, the desire of the Ottoman Sultans to exert more control over the nearly independent Kurdish tribes, among whom the Nestorians had lived for centuries in relative peace, soon caused relations between the Kurds and Nestorians to deteriorate badly.

This event coincided with the encroachment of Christian Russia onto Ottoman and Persian lands with the result that the Nestorians, who came to depend on the Russians and take satisfaction at the abuse meted out to Kurds and Persians, were persecuted as they had never been when the Russians withdrew. At this same time the Western Christian missionaries began arriving and they also managed to arouse the resentment and suspicions of the Muslims by settling among the Nestorians, building schools and churches and backing the them in their complaints against their overlords and implying intervention on their behalf by their respective governments.

Russia, for its own reasons, took an interest in the welfare of the eastern Christians if, for no other reason, than that the attacks against the Nestorians and retaliation against the Kurds meant constant unrest along the borders they shared. Britain came to suspect the Tsar’s motives, especially where their economic interests in India and trade were concerned, so they too applied pressure on the Ottoman and Persian governments to protect the Nestorian Christians and punish those who attacked them, so that Russia would have no pretext to intervene and extend its empire.

This increased focus on the Nestorians and demands for their safety, as well as the interest the missionaries were taking in “saving” them from heresy as well as using them as an evangelical tool against what they called “decadent” Islam, increased resentment and led only to more persecution…which led in turn to more calls for protecting the Nestorians, which brought on more resentment and persecution etc.

The archaeological discoveries made at around this same time eventually convinced the Nestorians that they were the lineal descendants of the ancient Assyrians so that claims to “their land” and special rights in “their land” began to turn heads and lead the Nestorians, through the ill-conceived plots of one or two segments, to their general ruin.

Seeing “opportunity” in the pressure being brought to bear on Ottomans and Persians alike by European powers in the years leading up to the First World War, the Nestorians threw in their lot with those who made war against their own countries in hopes that Britain and France would make good on promises made to them when those two countries had need of their help. In order to free their own troops and augment their forces the British and French made allies of the Nestorians and this too would lead to their further persecution. At the end of the war both Britain and France continued this practice by enrolling Kurds and Nestorians into police and army units called Levies, among other things…in spite of the fact this would only alienate them more from the new neighbors in Iraq the Nestorian refugees of Persia and Hakkari would be forced to settle among.

The British further confused things and made life even more precarious by not telling the Nestorians early enough that they were not going to receive any special guarantees, that these had been done away with as a result of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire into nation-sates and further, that Britain would not be able to secure a mandate on their former tribal lands in Hakkari…so that the best course for the Nestorian refugees was to begin to feel and act as loyal citizens of Iraq.

Mar Shimoun, unhappy with his reduced role, refused and a party of 700 armed Nestorians from among his followers decided to trek into Syria in the belief that the French were prepared to provide the protection and guarantees the British were “now” unwilling or unable to provide…this ended in disaster when the refugees tried to return, in the face of the Iraqi army, and killings took place on both sides. The Iraqi people as well as their government felt these Nestorians were ungrateful as well as a public threat to peace at a time when Iraq was barely beginning to emerge as an independent nation…the Iraqi government did not want to give the British a pretext for interfering again on behalf of the Nestorians and yet they wanted to hear no more demands for special rights or treatment from the Nestorians. The government retaliated by killing, in cold blood, 600 Nestorian men and boys…the British did nothing, which must have been their way of telling the Nestorians, finally and in no uncertain terms, that they were on their own…it would seem that Britain was interested now in exploiting the entire region and not one small minority.



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