Assyrians are a non-Arab, Semitic and Christian people.  The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East says of the group: “Numbering well over one million at one point, the Assyrians have steadily dwindled over the last decade.”[1] As of 2006, though the foundation says that “most estimates indicate that there are now between 350,000 and 500,000 Christians in a population of twenty-seven million.”[2]  The estimates of Assyrians as a portion of the total Iraqi population just after the turn of this century are commonly between 3 and 5 percent, although some estimates are as high as 10 percent.[3]  Between 10,000 and 30,000 of Iraq’s 800,000 Christians have fled the country, comprising 20 percent of the refugee flows to Syria.[4] 

As the Ottoman Empire entered into World War I, and nationalism across the Middle East intensified, countless Assyrians were massacred.  In 1915, up to two-thirds of the Assyrian populations of southeastern Turkey and northern Iran were “decimated in a matter of months;” this ordeal led to a massive exodus to present-day Lebanon and northern Iraq.[5]  Approximately 50,000 ended up in British-run refugee camps.[6]  Similar circumstances in 1918 resulted in a mass migration of Assyrians from Iran.[7]  In an attempt to express their nationalistic rights, a group of about 800 armed Assyrians crossed into Syria in 1933, only to be promptly pushed back into Iraq, where they were attacked by the Iraqi army.[8]  Later, in an attempt to integrate into Iraqi society, large numbers of Assyrian-Chaldeans moved en masse after World War II from the Mosul area to large cities throughout central and southern Iraq.[9]

In the early 1990s, Iraqi Assyrians began to migrate to Australia, Canada and the U.S. to escape the discrimination brought on by Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime.  Between 1991 and 2003, approximately half of Iraq’s Christians fled the country.[10]  At the start of the 21st century, the population of the 3 governates that fall under the Kurdistan Regional Government’s jurisdiction totaled 3.7 million to 3.9 million, with Assyrians accounting for approximately 40,000.[11]

Geographic Distribution

The ancestral homeland of the Assyrians includes parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.[12]  Iranian Assyrians are found mainly in the Urmia area and in major cities.  Assyrians in Syria are primarily urban-based as well.  In Turkey, Assyrian communities are located in the eastern, southeastern, and southern vilayets, and in Istanbul.  Assyrian communities exist within Armenia as well.[13]  Within Iraq, the Assyrians – the majority of whom still speak and write Aramaic – live in Baghdad and the northern province of Nineveh, particularly Mosul.[14]  Though nearly 200 Assyrian villages were destroyed from the 1960s onwards, the scholar Vahram Petrosian notes that the “greatest concentration of Assyrian villages remained relatively intact around the province of Mosul and Dohuk.”[15] 

Historic Hardship

Even within the Assyrian community, religious factionalism, class divisions and tribal affiliations have proven to be obstacles to establishing a unified identity.  After Assyrian intellectuals began to formulate one, appeals for an autonomous state began in the 20th century, but these were subsequently rejected.  Additionally, after Iraq gained its independence from the British, strife between Assyrians and Iraqis escalated.  The Assyrian nationalist movement was squelched by the Iraqi army, under the command of a Kurdish general,[16] with a massacre in August 1933 in Simele, in which approximately 3,000 Assyrians died.[17]  Under Baathist rule, Assyrian identity was suppressed further, as Assyrians were classified as Arab or Kurd.  Additionally, speaking Assyrian in public was criminalized and public displays of Assyrian nationalism were severely punished.[18] 

With the appearance of Western Christian missionaries in the region, tensions arose between the frustrated Kurds and supportive Assyrians.[19]  The presence of Assyrian armed troops – who were also used as police forces by the British colonists – in the early 20th century, left the Kurds feeling quite unsettled.[20]  After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Assyrians had no power to defend themselves against the Kurds, Turks and Arabs.[21] 

Assyrians have made numerous attempts to gain autonomy, but these have been repeatedly crushed.  During the early 1970s, for example, an Assyrian committee was established to draft an Assyrian National Petition to present to the Iraqi government.  However, this effort never garnered a response.[22]

Religious divisions have distinguished the Assyrians from other ethnic minorities in the region.[23]  Also, Sarguis and Beit-Ishoo note that: “To compound the problem, the eager participation of Assyrians on the side of the Allies in both World Wars has reinforced the view [of the Baathist regime] in Baghdad that Assyrians harbor pro-Western sympathies.”[24] 

During the rule of Iraq’s Baath party, Assyrian-Chaldeans were the only sect of Assyrians loyal to the regime, and as a result they benefited greatly from government policies.  Other sects did not receive the same benefits.  Regardless, Assyrians were still oppressed as a result of their minority status.  In the 1977 census, however, Assyrians were forced to register as either Arab or Kurd.[25]  In the 1990s, the Baath party furthered its mistreatment of Assyrians by stipulating that only “Arab Christians” could acquire food ration cards to be used as a part of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.[26] 

During the Iran-Iraq war, approximately 60,000 Assyrians were killed, captured or missing-in-action.[27]  In 1991 and 1992, the Assyrian community was cut in half along the 36th parallel, with the northern half under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the southern half under the control of Baghdad.[28]  Such instances highlight the discrimination Assyrians have long endured

Ongoing Hardship

As a result of the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq, Assyrian Christians and their churches, along with other places of worship, have been targeted by insurgents who consider the group to be “sympathetic to the Western occupiers.”[29]  The struggle for recognition as a non-Arab group, rather than “Arab Christians”[30] is ongoing.  “Not one member state of the Arab League recognizes Assyrians as a distinct ethnic and cultural group,” one scholar wrote.[31]  Assyrians are concerned about receiving rightful recognition and representation as a distinct ethnic minority within Iraq.  Assyrians were denied the right to vote in the 2005 Iraqi Parliamentary Elections.[32]

The correction of land claims and property disputes stemming from the actions of the Baath party are of concern.  Many Assyrians also claim that the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) has been “at best negligent and at worst hostile toward Assyrian rights and aspirations.”[33]  However, “in terms of political affiliations and preferences, the Iraqi Assyrians can be divided into two categories: rural population, which generally sympathizes with the Kurdish movement, and the urban population, which tends to side up with Arabs,” according to a scholar on the region.[34]

Three of the KRG’s ministers have Assyrian origins.  Additionally, KRG funding has financed the construction of 30 Assyrian-speaking schools in the region, as well as other projects.[35]  Despite this representation in the region, Christians from Iraqi Kurdistan are fleeing as quickly as their counterparts elsewhere in the country.  The Assyrian International News Agency claims that the Assyrian population living within Kurdistan still endures human rights abuses and discrimination.[36]  In addition to discrimination, reasons for fleeing include “a feeling that they will not be able to cope in the long run with the tribal structure of Kurdish society; a fear of Islamism among the Kurds; and an uncertainty about the future of the northern enclave,” according to Petrosian.[37]

Other factors behind the current exodus from Iraq include proselytizing among Muslim populations, which is a source of concern for many Assyrians as the wedge between Muslims and Christians in the region is being driven further.[38]  Indeed, the Assyrian Academic Society asserts that: “Chaldo-Assyrian students (especially young women) are being targeted for un-Islamic dress and other sectarian grounds for attack- precluding them from an education and further marginalizing them in Iraqi society.  All this serves to drive an excessive level of flight by families who are feeling fundamentally insecure in what is technically a free Iraq.”[39]

“By rending apart some peoples from the whole, Saddam and those whom continue to exploit theses divisions add to the dislocation of Chaldo-Assyrians from their culture and heritage.  Conveniently, it also serves to undermine the ability of Chaldo-Assyrians to project themselves politically,” the group concluded.[40]  Separation of groups even includes the Assyrian community itself, whose internal division have only widened since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. [41]