1. The Betrayal of
the Powerless
Assyrians after the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq
The indigenous
Assyrians, Yezidis and the other smaller groups
in Iraq were jubilant listening to United States President Bush explain the objectives behind the 2003 war on Iraq,
promising to end the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein and securing freedom for all Iraqi people,
regardless of their ethnicity or religious belief. It did not take long before the Assyrians began witnessing
a genocide and yet another betrayal (the first was that promise made by of the British post World War I)
when the US deserted the indigenous Assyrians and Yezidis and surrendered to the demands of the Shi'a Arabs
and the Kurds. The continuous attacks on the Assyrian Christians in Iraq and bombing of churches started in 2004
and intensified through 2011. In 2014, ISIS invaded the Assyrian and Yezidi towns in northern Iraq (and in Syria)
and caused a new tragedy and genocide while the Kurds and Shi'a strengthened their positions in the new Iraq.
Assyrian
Cultural Foundation,
Qala Mhadyana
host Ninos Nirari,
September 25, 2021.
Paul Gewargis and
William Aprim at the
Assyrian American Association
(AAA) Festival promoting Frederick Aprim's new
book, including a collage of photographs of
other Assyrian activists' booths, on October 10,
2021 in Skokie, Illinois.
Mr. Aprim provides in his book, The Betrayal of the Powerless: Assyrians After the 2003 US
Invasion of Iraq, a lucid outline and analysis of the events after the fall of Saddam Hussein and
the rise of the ambitious Kurdish power in the region inhabited by Iraq's indigenous population of
Assyrians. According to the Author, the American policy in Iraq after the two Gulf Wars brought
no end to their marginalized political power. In fact, it unleashed other internal and external
actors who further deteriorated their status as the oldest inhabitants of Mesopotamia. This is an
essential reading in order to fully understand the condition of the Assyrians under Kurdish, Arab
and Islamic rules and the challenges faced by Assyrians in Iraq, Syria and perhaps soon in Iran. Mr.
Aprim, with this work introduces the reader to the historical and current reality told by a person
who knows the socio-ethnic-cultural environment of the different ethnic groups of Mesopotamia
and their neighbours. The concise description of the events reflects a deep knowledge on behalf of
the author of the modern history of the Assyrians.
Professor
Dr. Efrem Yildiz
Vice-Rector for International Relations
University of Salamanca, Spain
In his new book Frederick Aprim offers a detailed survey of the plight suffered by the Assyrians of
Iraq in the 21st century. It details how the American invasion in 2003 stirred up renewed hope for
liberation, resettlement and even self-determination among this indigenous minority, only to be
crushed once again as discrimination and the horrors unleashed by ISIS in 2014 caused renewed
waves of emigration. Today, fewer Assyrians than ever before in history remain in their ancestral
areas. Aprim's work offers an important insider perspective to anyone who wishes to understand
the current state and future outlook of the Assyrians in Iraq and the Middle East.
Professor Aryo Makko Professor of History and Director of the Hans Blix
Centre for the History of International Relations,
Stockholm University, Sweden
Second Edition,
Third Printing
2. Assyrians:
From Bedr Khan to Saddam Hussein
Second Edition, Third Printing
Throughout the Christian Era, the Assyrians have faced an immense tragedy through persecution, oppression, and massacres. The Assyrian tragedy in Mesopotamia continued intermittently during the Sassanid Persians (A.D. 226 - 637), Seljuk Turks invasion of the eleventh century, Mongols invasion in 1258, Tamerlane's destruction that began in 1394, the Saffavid Persians in early sixteenth century and during the rule of the Ottoman Turks since the middle of the sixteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Turks and Kurds committed numerous massacres against the Assyrian Christians in their secluded mountains of northern Mesopotamia and in Tur Abdin region in modern southeastern Turkey. As the Ottoman Empire entered WWI, it declared jihad (holy war) against its Christian subjects. Backed by Kurds, the Turkish army invaded northwestern Persia (Iran) and committed further atrocities against the Assyrian refugees who fled the Ottoman territories and against Assyrians of Persia as well. The jihad transformed into an ethnic genocide against the Assyrians that was perpetrated by the Turkish state and Kurdish warlords. This genocide continues to this very day due to the policies of the Kurds in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and northeastern Syria. The Assyrians lost two-thirds of their population and most of their homelands in northern Mesopotamia during WWI alone. Since the creation of the modern Middle Eastern states after the partition of the Ottoman Empire post WWI, the Assyrians have faced and continue to face a systematic Arabization, Turkification, and Kurdification policies by Pan-Arab governments, Pan-Turkish governments, and by Kurdish political parties. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians have fled their homelands seeking shelter in Europe, United States, and Australia. Furthermore, the rise of fundamentalism in the Middle East is posing another serious threat to the survival of the remaining Assyrians and to other Christian communities in the Middle East.
After the establishment of Islam as a state religion in the Fertile Crescent by the 8th century, the ferocious attacks by the Timurids, plundering the region as they descended from Central Asia in the 14th century, drove many Christian Aramaic speakers who did not convert to Islam into the mountains of the Taurus, Hakkari, and the Zagros for shelter. Others remained in their ancestral villages on the Mosul (Nineveh) Plain only to face heavy pressure to assimilate into Arab culture. The greatest catastrophe to visit the Assyrians in the modern period was the genocide committed against them, as Christians, during the Great War.
From the Assyrian renaissance experienced when, miraculously, they became the objects of Western Christian missionary educational and medical efforts, the Assyrians fell into near oblivion. Shunned by the Allies at the treaties that ended WWI, Assyrians drifted into Diaspora, destructive denominationalism, and fierce assimilation tendencies as exercised by chauvinistic Arab, Persian and Turkish state entities. Today they face the growing clout of their old enemies and neighbors, the Kurds, another Muslim ethnic group that threatens to control power, demand assimilation, and offer to engulf Assyrians as the price for continuing to live in the ancient Assyrian homeland. As half of the world's last Aramaic-speaking population has arrived in unwanted Diaspora, some voices are making an impact, including that of Frederick Aprim.
Eden Naby, PhD
Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx and Mujahid (Westview, 2002)
The Assyrian Experience (Harvard College Library, 1999)
3. Assyrians:
The Continuous Saga
Assyrians have been
deprived of their rich heritage in their ancestral
homelands in Mesopotamia. From one side, history
curriculum taught in the Middle East's public schools is
manipulated and it focuses predominantly on the region's
Islamic era. Such curriculum is grossly altered and
rewritten to suit a meticulously planned 'Arabization,'
'Turkicization,' and more recently Kurdification process
of the Assyrians. From the other side, some historians
question the continuation of ancient Assyrian
civilization and people. Furthermore, certain Old
Testament non-favorite images of Assyrians are dominant
in literature. Thus, unbiased publications and
historical references regarding the survival of
Assyrians since the fall of their Imperial capital
Nineveh are of great importance.
This
is a very important and much needed book that should have been
written long ago. The author traces the history of the Assyrians
from the fall of their Empire to the present day and convincingly
demonstrates the unbroken continuity of Assyrian identity through
the millennia in the middle of endless persecutions. This
dispassionate yet captivating book corrects many misconceptions
about the Assyrians, both ancient and modern. It is a must for every
modern Assyrian and Assyriologist, and of considerable interest to
the general public as well. I personally started reading it from
Chapter 10, "The so-called Assyrian cruelty," and couldn't stop
reading.
This booklet provides a
short summary of the state of Assyrians in the Middle
East with three country sections dedicated to Iraq,
Turkey, and Syria. The appendices list a selection of
Assyrian Christian churches and villages destroyed or
converted during the control of the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.
Country sections compile 20th century events
highlighting crimes and incidents of oppression and
discrimination against the native Assyrian Christian
populations.
Xlibris Press Release: The Betrayal of the Powerless
Facebook:
The Betrayal of the Powerless
Professor
Dr. Efrem Yildiz
Professor Aryo Makko
