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Assyrian of the Year 6756 Sarkis Aghajan Mamendu The truth about Zinda Magazine’s Assyrian Person of the Year 6756 is that he is the most perplexing individual who happens to hold in one hand enormous power in Iraq and on the other may determine the future of his people as never before. He is bifurcated between his loyalty to the Kurdish nationalism as seen through the eyes of the descendants of Mustafa Barzani and his love for his people who have brutally suffered under Mustafa Barzani’s countrymen. Similarly, Assyrians are divided in their affection for the man hardly any of us knew before the fall of Saddam Hussein. Yet today, no one wields more influence among the Assyrians in the Middle East and in the Diaspora as does the man both reviled and loved by his own people. The editorial board of Zinda Magazine bestows the title of the Assyrian of the Year to the elusive Assyrian statesman of Arbil, Mr. Sarkis Aghajan Mamendu, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance and Economy in the Kurdish Regional Government. Sarkis Aghajan, as he is commonly referred to, enjoys an overwhelming popularity. He moved up in ranks of power within the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) much like his other Assyrian predecessors – namely through blind-loyalty to the Barzani family, now led by Mr. Masoud Barzani – the current president of the Kurdish Regional Government. Masoud’s nephew, Nechirvan, is the KRG prime minister, who in turn appointed Mr. Aghajan as his Deputy in charge of the KRG’s financial affairs. Aghajan has been a friend of the Barzanis since the days of the self-exile in Iran when in 1975 the Barzanis were forced to leave North Iraq. Sarkis Aghajan and Nechrivan Barzani were students who later studied at the University of Tehran when the Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Eshai Shimun was assassinated in San Jose, California. In less than a year, the bishop of Tehran – of the same tribal affiliation as Aghajan and born in the same tribal region as the Barzanis - was consecrated the Patriarch of the Church of the East in London, England. In the coming years the bond between the three men from Iran grew stronger with every renewed promise of the Kurdish and Assyrian emancipation in North Iraq. Thirty years later – after decades of chaos and humiliation - during meetings in Chicago and Washington, the Patriarch, the Prime Minister, and the Treasurer were discussing plans to implement the most ambitious reconstruction and public relations plans for the future nation-state of Kurdistan. The Patriarch’s financially bankrupt churches in the Diaspora were generally suffering from negative membership growth and his people in Iraq were waiting desperately for any opportunity to leave the bedlam in Iraq for a kinder and gentler life in the west. His Holiness needed the assurance that the ancient Church of the East – the longest withstanding Assyrian institution - will have a future in the land where it came from, and could support the weakening churches in the western countries. Time was running out for the Prime Minister. Nechirvan Barzani’s government needed to build up the American and the European investors’ confidence in the ability of his people to transform the “no-fly zone” into “the Other Iraq”. In America, the Kurds were in the news connected to the “mountain people of Iraq” who were constantly escaping the wrath of Sunni Arabs. No serious investor could have taken these rock climbers seriously when the oil fields of Kirkuk were to be auctioned off to the highest bidders. Enter Sarkis Aghajan! The man trusted by both the Patriarch and the Prime Minister was to become the architect of the spectacular public relations revue that has since baffled observers everywhere. First, the waning popularity of the Patriarch, in the face of the ever-increasing recognition of Mr. Yonadam Kanna, was given a boost by the dramatic 2005 melo-drama played out in Chicago when the bishops of the Church of the East met at the Holy Synod to un-seat one of their own. His Grace Mar Bawai Soro (nowadays referred to by his fellow bishops as Mr. Ashur Soro), who as many other priests and bishops had shown care for Mr. Yonadam Kanna’s Assyrian Democratic Movement was lashed out of the Church. The Patriarch was at once promulgated as the champion of the Assyrian identity and the fallen bishop as the catalyst bringing his Church closer to a final demise under the triumphant Roman Catholic Church. While the Patriarch and the Bishop’s court case awaits final judgment in the California courts, the puzzled supporters of the ADM wonder the increasing role of the Church in the political affairs of their nation. The result has been a disastrous decrease in support for the only independent Assyrian political party in Iraq, namely Zowaa. Mr. Aghajan has successfully absorbed all other remaining political parties in north Iraq under the KRG banner. At home Sarkis Aghajan wears quite a different hat. Working closely with such figures as Danny Yatom, a former director of Israel's spy service, the Mossad, and his business partner, Shlomi Michaels, the Barzanis and Aghajan hired a lobby firm in Washington to help them secure 4 billion dollars from the Coalition Provisional Administration in Baghdad. On 3 June 2004, Barbour Griffith & Rogers agreed to represent the Kurdistan Democratic Party for $29,000 a month. In less than a month, the Kurds flew $1.4 billion in cash to Arbil on three helicopters. Aghajan now had more than enough to become the Great Engineer the Assyrian patriarchs had pushed him to become. Mr. Aghajan’s masterful plan in 2006 reached beyond the affairs of the Church for which he was awarded peculiar saintly medals and orders from all three major Assyrian patriarchs. In 2004 the USAID office in Washington had earmarked over 30 million dollars to benefit the Christian villages and projects in north Iraq. By the middle of 2005, having already received over a billion dollars from the U.S. government, Aghajan was ready to spend millions on numerous construction projects for which he later only provided State Department investigators hand-written invoices in Arabic. The line items included such extravagant expenses as the wall-paint projects for single homes totaling eight thousand U.S. dollars per house. Soon after Zinda Magazine in an investigative report revealed an agreement between Mr. Barzani’s government (mediated by Mr. Aghajan) and the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East for the construction of up to 30 Assyrian parishes and a patriarchate in Ankawa – outside of Arbil. Quickly after the publication of this report, Mr. Aghajan initiated an equally hefty building project for the construction of homes in the Assyrian villages. Aghajan’s promoters in the U.S. tell Zinda Magazine that as many as 7,000 homes have already been built and as many are in the plans to be built in the next 12 months. Zinda critically doubts the validity of this information, yet the extensive building projects under the watchful eyes of Sarkis Aghajan can hardly be ignored. The next item on Mr. Aghajan’s to-do-list was attracting the American investors to the Kurdish region. The Kurds had failed to secure a 20 percent share of the 18 billion dollar reconstruction budget that the Bush Administration had set aside for Iraq. They only received 7 percent. Aghajan needed much more to transition the KRG into a model economy. Starting September 2005 the American businessmen, many of whom were Chaldean-Assyrians were invited to meetings with the representatives of the KRG, accompanied by U.S. officials who were also promoting business in the Kurdish regions. On 20 February of this year, Franklin L. Lavin, the undersecretary of commerce for international trade, traveled to Arbil to promote Kurdistan as a "gateway" for U.S. business in Iraq. By now even some priests of the Assyrian Church of the East were proud owners of businesses in the Kurdish region. The next item on Mr. Aghajan’s robust public relations plan was Nechirvan Barzani’s most wanted scheme. In the second half of last year a 24-hour satellite television station began broadcasting from north Iraq. It was named after the Assyrian goddess, Ishtar, who is historically associated with the ancient Assyrian city of Arbella (today’s Arbil). The official logo of the Ishtar TV is the mis-colored Assyrian flag and its offices are just outside of Arbil in Ankawa where the Patriarch’s new palatial residence is built. It began airing news and reports, mini-dramas, music videos and children’s cartoons in Kurdish, Arabic, and Assyrian (Syriac) languages. In no time, Assyrians became familiar with the name Sarkis Aghajan – quoted often as "the Benevelont", "the Engineer", and "the Hero of the Iraqi Christians." Aghajan invited Assyrian entertainers to Arbil to sing his praises. The same singers who in the years past had praised the sacrifices of the Assyrian Democratic Movement were now flagrantly paying tribute to the man who was now single-handedly putting an end to the ADM legacy in north Iraq. Even the menion of the name Zowaa was forbidden on Ishtar TV. The ADM’s 2004 declaration of the Chaldo-Assyrian-Syriac unity was now replaced by Aghajan’s Chaldean-Assyrian-Syriac unanimity. Next to every Assyrian Aid Society building Aghajan began erecting a newer and more modern facility. With every new home, bridge, and church a new convert in the United States and Canada sang Aghajan’s praises. Everything appeared to be moving in the right direction for the Minister of Finance until the release of a UN report in April of this year. The 2007 report of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) covering the first three months of this year provoked mixed reactions in the Kurdish region. The Barzanis accused the UN of "exaggeration and inaccuracy" while the Assyrian activists claimed that the extent of violations has been understated. The 3 million dollar Kurdish lobby in Washington and Aghajan’s Assyrian mouthpieces had painted the Kurdish areas as the safest and most prosperous part of Iraq. The UN report was saying it suffers from considerable violations of human rights. The report noted that in the Arbil province alone 358 women have burnt themselves to death since 2003. Another 218 have tried to do so. Several journalists have been arrested by security services over the past few years. Others have been threatened or beaten by unknown persons. Dindar Zebari, Kurdish Regional Government's coordinator for UN Affairs commented that this report is not precise in its investigations because in some cases it has relied on media reports. Last month, Zinda Magazine learned that a vigorous Kurdish lobbying effort is underway in Washington to deride the reports published in Zinda and AINA. Kurdish officials are sending letters to Congressional representatives and the State Department accusing these two Assyrian media outlets as manufacturers of anti-Kurdish propaganda. Moreover, Zinda offices are flooded with CDs and DVDs of Sarkis Aghajan’s building projects and life in “The Other Iraq”. Today, the most absorbing issue at hand is the fate of the Nineveh Plain in north Iraq. The KDP is throwing most of its chips on the table in the hope of annexing the Nineveh Governorate or the area around Mosul to the “Kurdish Region”. Some reports indicate that there may be a considerable amount of untapped oil under the ancestral land of Assyria, beneath the Assryian towns and villages. As expected, as soon as the news of the discovery of oil in the Nineveh Province became public, Mr. Aghajan changed his colors and emerged as the champion of the Assyrian Autonomy in the Nineveh Plain region. He invited hundreds of his supporters to Ankawa to outline his demand for an autonomous area for the Christians in the Nineveh Plains. Yet another Assyrian member of the KDP, Ninef Matran Hariri criticized Mr. Aghajan for being too generous on this issue. “I don’t want to see Nineveh Plain an independent autonomy, nor do I want to see it being part of the central [Iraqi] government,” says Mr. Hariri, a Christian advisor to the politburo of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a member of the same Assyrian tribe as Mr. Aghajan. He continues: “The first thing is to make the Nineveh Plain part of Kurdistan, then through negotiations with the government we can have some form of self-rule like having our own police force and local administrators in our towns and villages.” Hariri proposes some form of a special status for Assyrians in the Kurdish areas similar to that of the American Indians. Mr. Ninef Matran Hariri was recently interviewed on FoxNews. During his entire interview he never mentioned the term “Assyrian”, using only the term Kurdish Christians. In North Iraq the authority of the KDP members is unquestioned. KDP is the new Baath Party and its members regardless of their national affiliation believe in the ultimate success of a brand of Kurdish nationalism that is anchored in tribalism and familial proximity. Sarkis Aghajan’s public relations machine in the U.S. everyday is gaining momentum. Even the Christian Evangelicals are now telling us that Kurdistan is an important area, because such important Biblical figures as Jonah, Noah, and Esther lived there. What ADM (Zowaa) lacked significantly, Aghajan possesses abundantly: money and a knack for western-style self-promotion. For every Kurd in the U.S. there are 10 Assyrians. It only makes sense that the Kurdish officials utilize the power of the Assyrian grassroots campaigns to improve the image of the Kurdish region. Meanwhile, the risk-averse Sarkis Aghajan remains the man waving the magic wand in Arbil. Event of the Year 6756 Christians Leaving Iraq as Refugees in Jordan and Syria According to the Syrian officials over one million Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion. As many or more may be in Jordan. Reliable sources to Zinda indicate that as many as 10,000 refugees from a total 40-50,000 are Christians leaving Iraq every month. U.N. officials say many are doctors, professors, business owners and recent college graduates, the intellectual core that officials in Washington hoped would rebuild Iraq. They are not assisted or housed in camps. Rather they have settled in the slums of Damascus and in its Christian quarter. Rents are high. Schools are overcrowded and there is the risk of health problems everywhere. The displacement of the Assyrians within Iraq, caused by secterian violence and economic decline, is massive and is increasing. Typically Christians either move to the Kurdish region and the Nineveh Plains areas, or if they have the means they leave the country. As soon as the refugees arrive in Amman or Damascus they look for work, but to no avail. The unemployment rate among these refugees is staggering. The Syrian and Jordanian governments are unable to accomodate the nearly two million refugees across their borders with Iraq - a number that is increasing daily. With the worsening conditions for Christians in Baghdad the number of refugees is expected to rise many folds in the next few months. |
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A Chaldean Priest and Three Deacons Killed in Mosul Courtesy of the AsiaNews
(ZNDA: Baghdad) An armed group gunned down and killed Fr Ragheed Ganni and three of his deacons. The murder took place right after Sunday mass in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul's Nour District, where Father Ragheed was parish priest. Hours later the bodies were still lying in the street because no one dared retrieve them. Given the situation tensions in the area remain high. According to Mosul Police the Mass ended at 7:30 pm and all four victims got into the priest's car to drive away. After they had gone about 100 metres a car cut them off. Four armed men got out and shot them dead. For some time since the fall of Saddam Hussein Christians have become victims of what amounts to an open campaign of persecution often denounced by Chaldean and Orthodox bishops.
Father Ragheed himself had been targeted several times in previous attacks. The Church of the Holy Spirit has also been repeatedly attacked and bombed in the last few years, the last time occurred but a few months ago. Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, 35, was the pastor of the Ruh Al-Qudus (Church of the Holy Spirit) parish and secretary to the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul. He received his Bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Mosul University in 1993, and studied theology in Rome before returning to Iraq in 2003. He had studied in Italy and was fluent in Arabic as well as Italian, French and English. In 2005 he had visited Italy where he gave testimony during the Vigil to Eucharistic Congress in Bari. Today, hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Fr. Ragheed Ganni and his deacons, Shamasha Basman Joseph, Shamasha Bassam and Shamasha Ghassan, one day after they were gunned down. Among the attendees were His Beatitude Mar Emanuel Delly, patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church and Mr. Sarkis Aghajan, Finance Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government. Two Assyrian US Embassy Employees Killed By Al-Qaeda Courtesy of the Assyrian International News Agency (ZNDA: Baghdad) An Assyrian couple that worked for the US embassy in Baghdad has been killed by an al Qaeda-led group. The couple was killed on Monday, May 28. According to Reuters, after the husband went missing late last week his wife went to look for him and then she too appeared to have been abducted. U.S officials, who wish to remain anonymous, told AINA the couple's car was stopped and the husband was abducted while the terrorists screamed "you filthy Christian traitor." When the wife, Amal, attempted to deliver the ransom to the kidnappers, described as a Sunni group, she was killed. The self-styled "Islamic State of Iraq" said in a statement published on the Internet "God's ruling has been implemented against two of the most prominent agents and spies of the worshippers of the Cross... a man and woman who occupy an important position at the U.S. embassy...The swords of the security personnel of the Islamic State of Iraq... are with God's grace slitting the throats of crusaders and their aides and lackeys." The group said it was able to acquire a large amount of money from them. It did not give further details. U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said only that two local Baghdad embassy employees were missing. "There are two local national employees of the embassy in Baghdad who are missing. Their whereabouts, at this point, are unknown," Casey told reporters in Washington. "We do have concerns about their welfare." Mahdi Army Orders Christian Women to Veil Themselves Courtesy of the Assyrian International News Agency
(ZNDA: Baghdad) An undated letter issued by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army to Christians in Baghdad orders Christian women to veil themselves or face grave consequences. The letter, obtained and translated by AINA, states that the Virgin Mary was not unveiled and so Christian women should not be unveiled. The letter ends with an ominous note that committees have been established to monitor the Christian populace and enforce the decree. For the Christian Assyrians in Baghdad, the imposition of Shari'a (Islamic law) is coming from both Sunnis and Shiites. On 18 March al-Qaeda moved into the predominantly Assyrian Dora neighborhood in Baghdad and demanded payment of the jizya, the poll tax demanded by the Koran which all Christians and Jews must pay. Families that could not pay the jizya were instructed to give a daughter or sister in marriage to a Muslim. Here follows the Mahdi Army letter: The Legal Veil
1 Sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam. This is an expression that Muslims use whenever the name of Prophet Muhammad is mentioned or written. The meaning of it is: "May the blessings and the peace of Allah be upon him (Muhammad). Terrorists Sack & Occupy a Convent in Baghdad Courtesy of the AsiaNews
(ZNDA: Baghdad) Terrorists, believed to be Shiites, on 31 May occupied the Convent belonging to the Chaldean Sisters of the Scared Heart in Baghdad. Sources in the capital in contact with the nuns denounced the event. The Angel Raphael convent lies in the Mikanik area of the oppressed Dora quarter where for months now a ferocious anti Christian campaign of persecution has been unfolding. The only two sisters who still lived in there tell that a group of terrorists broke into the building during their absence; on their return they found the convent had been sacked of all its goods and turned into a base for military operations. According to anonymous sources, in all probability, Shiite militants are behind the attack; as they too join Sunnis in their anti-Christian campaign. A letter signed by the Mahdi Army, linked to the radical leader al Sadr, which imposes the Islamic veil on Christian women in Baghdad was distributed in Baghdad's Christian neighborhoods. Today a spokesperson for the group in Najaf, denied all involvement with the message, yet according to priests on the round, the situation is “very worrying”. Sources maintain that the attack on the convent, “could be in response to the Chaldean, Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly’s condemnation of the attack on the Sunni Abdul Qader Al Dilani mosque”, which took place on May 28th in the capital. The leader of the Chaldean Church in fact joined the Council of Christian Churches in Iraq in denouncing the episode as an attack against “all Iraq and all Iraqis without exceptions, capable of undermining national unity and fomenting division and discord”. Chaldean Church to Convene Synod in Iraq Courtesy of Zenit News Agency (ZNDA: Arbil) Leaders of the Chaldean Church in Iraq will gather for a weeklong synod and the issue of security in that war-torn land will be at the forefront of the prelates' discussions. The meeting begins Friday in al-Qosh, near the ancient city of Nineveh. Though the last synod was held in Rome for security reasons, this year, the bishops wanted to stay in Iraq. "Despite security concerns, the patriarch and bishops chose to hold the synod on national soil to send a strong signal of solidarity to the entire community, to let them know that we are present and that their lives are dear to us," said Monsignor Philip Najim, the procurator for the Chaldean Church to the Holy See. "The issue of the security of the community, halved by forced emigration, will be at the heart of the synod discussions," Monsignor Najim added. He said other topics for discussion will include the future of Babel College, the only faculty of theology in the country, which was recently transferred to Arbil, and the conditions of dioceses in Iraq and the entire Middle East. Bishops from the Chaldean diaspora in the United States, Canada, Australia and Lebanon will also attend, as will Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the apostolic nuncio to Iraq. Immediately after the G8 meetings in Europe, President George Bush will visit the Pope in Vatican to discuss the situation of the Christians in Iraq. Iraq's Christian Population Dwindling Due to Threats, Attacks Courtesy of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (ZNDA: Baghdad) Leaders of Iraq's Christian community estimate that over two-thirds of the country's Christian population has fled the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. While exact numbers are unknown, reports suggest that whole neighborhoods of Christians have cleared out in the cities of Baghdad and Al-Basrah, and that both Sunni and Shi'ite insurgent groups and militias have threatened Christians. The gravity of the situation prompted Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani last week to ask Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi to take steps to protect the Christian community. Sunni imams in Baghdad have made similar statements to their congregations in Friday Prayer sermons.
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq is responsible for the bulk of attacks on Christians from the northern Kurdish region to Baghdad. Insurgents laid siege to the Al-Durah neighborhood of Baghdad earlier this month and demanded that Christians living there pay jizya, a head tax on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, to the mujahedin or else convert to Islam. The Islamic State also hung posters throughout Al-Durah calling on Christian women to veil their faces. Locals report that nearly 200 Christian families have fled the neighborhood recently with just the clothes on their backs. In other cases, families have been given 72 hours to pack their belongings and leave. Some have fled to Kurdistan, but the majority have left for Syria and Jordan, Christian leaders say. Click Here to View ABC News Video "Al-Bayyinah" reported on May 10 that there are some 200 Saudi gunmen holed up in Al-Durah. According to a May 22 "Al-Sabah" editorial, the gunmen demanded that each Christian pay 50,000 dinars ($40) to the mujahedin as the price for maintaining their religion. Residents were told that "if they refuse to pay the tribute, they have to convert to Islam and marry their daughters to the mujahedin. If they choose to leave the city, their properties and belongings will be confiscated by the terrorists," the daily reported. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has demanded Christians pay 250,000 dinars (about $200, the average monthly salary) to stay in their homes, according to aina.org on May 25. The website reported on May 18 that those who do flee Al-Durah must pay an "exit" fee of $200 per person or $400 per car. Church leaders have also been targeted by insurgents. Over the past year, six Chaldean priests were kidnapped in Baghdad. In March, two elderly Chaldean nuns in Kirkuk were killed by insurgents as they slept. There are unconfirmed reports that a Christian teenager in Al-Basrah was crucified in October. Moreover, 27 churches have been destroyed since 2003. Dozens of other churches and monasteries have been abandoned after threats were made. Some Christian leaders have likened the targeting of Christians to an ethnic-cleansing campaign. "Christians in Iraq are on their way to extinction, cut off from the country's political process," said Father Bashar Warda, the rector of St. Peter Major Seminary, IRNews reported on May 25. He blamed the continuing crisis on the "indifference of Iraqi leaders," saying, "They do not consider us as belonging to this nation." Other Minorities Also Threatened Recent incidents in Mosul have drawn attention to the targeting of other minorities. Following reports last month that a Yezidi teenager who eloped with a Muslim man and converted to Islam was killed by her family, the Islamic State announced that it would retaliate.
According to an Internet statement this month, Yezidi leaders have formed a militia to protect their community. "According to the present circumstances in the Sheykhan area of evilness and aggression toward the Yezidi sect, the burning of their cultural and religious centers...and the silence that accompanied the aggression from those who sold their religion to the masters of material and power.... We have formed a troop of the brave and faithful from the Yezidi clan called the Malik Al-Tawus [King Peacock] troop," the statement said. The troop is "completely independent" from all parties and is charged with protecting the land and secret places of the Yezidis in both Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, the May 3 statement added. The daily "Al-Sabah al-Jadid" reported on May 15 that the Sabaean community has been threatened as well. Shi'ite Militias: Attackers Or Defenders? Shi'ite militias have also targeted the Christian community. Fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr this week warned Christians in Baghdad to wear the veil or face grave consequences, aina.org reported on May 30. A statement issued by al-Sadr's Imam Al-Mahdi Army rationalized that since the Virgin Mary wore a veil, present-day Christians should too. The statement claimed that the militia has formed committees to monitor Christians and enforce the veiling decree.
The statement, signed by the "People's Foundation for the Master Al-Mahdi Army," referred to the writings of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (Muqtada's father) who the group claimed ruled, presumably through a fatwa, that women who did not veil themselves were adulteresses who should be locked up by their husbands if they refuse to veil their faces. In a Friday Prayer sermon on May 25, Muqtada al-Sadr vowed that he was committed to protecting Iraq's Christian community, telling his followers: "I will not forget to say the blood of Sunnis and Iraqi Christians are prohibited to be shed by Iraqis as they are either our brothers in religion or in the homeland. They have sought our refuge, and we announce our readiness to defend them." Continuing, he said: "What Al-Nawasib [a derogatory term for Sunni insurgents] are doing in order to compel [Christians] to convert to Islam is ignominious, and contradicts the Koran, as God says, 'Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from error.' I tell the Christian brothers so that they can know that Islam serves the needs of the minorities, and that it is the religion that always calls for interfaith dialogue."Meanwhile, al-Sadr spokesman Hasan al-Zarqani claimed in a May 25 interview with Al-Jazeera television that the Chaldean community in Iraq has said the Al-Mahdi Army "was the only side that protected Christians in Al-Durah." Government Unable To Deal With Crisis The Iraqi government last week expressed its "solidarity" with the Christian community, and that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet discussed the threats and expulsions of Christian families and vowed to provide assistance to families displaced or adversely affected by insurgent attacks. But it appears there has been little concrete support for Iraq's Christian community. Until Iraqi security forces can clear Al-Durah of Sunni and Shi'ite insurgents, the few Christians still living there will remain under threat. Those who have joined the millions of refugees and displaced, will be forced to continue living in limbo until an acceptable solution can be found. There is little question that the targeting of minority communities has had an adverse impact on Iraq, a country that historically was known for its diversity. Already by some estimates, only 200,000-400,000 of the 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq in 2003 remain. For Iraq's Christians, many of whom trace their presence in the country to their Assyrian ancestors, the impact of such displacement is immeasurable.
Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria Courtesy of the New York Times (ZNDA: Damascus) Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.
Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light. As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls. “During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba. For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore. Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.” By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes. Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months. According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher. Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”
Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women. “So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,” said Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which helps Iraqi refugees. She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable asset is their bodies. “I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting themselves,” Sister Marie-Claude said. “They would go out on alternate nights — each woman took her turn — and then divide the money to feed all the children.” For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria’s government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United Nations refugee agency’s Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking its silence. “We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases,” Ms. Günther said. “We’ve had special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution.” She called the officials’ new openness “a great step.” Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women’s rights lawyer, said the government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms. Asaad said. “Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or aunt,” she said. “But prostitution isn’t the only problem. Our schools are overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We don’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don’t have shelters or health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq, Syria is careful not to deport these women.” Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital, in nightclubs known as casinos — a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs. At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an Iraqi theme. One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in Arabic: “I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!” Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding ballad. “After Iraq I have no homeland,” she sang. “I’m ready to go crawling on my knees back to Iraq.” Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print, gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been fitted with colored gel filters that lent the women’s skin a greenish cast. Al Rawabi’s customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one clapped. She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq, naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in leopard print who had danced with her, “most especially my best friend, Sahar.” After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers, Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left “because of the troubles.” Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200. Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night’s wage for an Iraqi prostitute working in Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs earn much less. In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club’s manager, who introduced himself as Hassan, broke in proudly. “We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no matter how bad business is,” he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. “We are sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help to the girls whose families are in special difficulties.” Umm Hiba shook her head. “It’s true that the managers here are good, that they’re helping us and not stealing the girls’ money,” she said. “But I’m so angry. “Do you think we’re happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters’ naked bodies?” Most so-called casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues. Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual favors. “They have an hourly rate,” he said. “And they have regular customers.” Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates. From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the Saudi border. Syria, where it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost weekend destination for groups of Saudi men. And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans, still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them out of business. “From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."
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Assyrians Demonstrate in Stockholm Against Christian Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq Courtesy of the Assyrian International News Agency (ZNDA: Stockholm) The Assyrian community of Stockholm held a demonstration last Wednesday to draw attention to the plight of Assyrians in Iraq, who are according to reports, undergoing ethnic cleansing. A large group of of demonstrators equipped with banners filled the streets of Stockholm, demanding protection for the Christians of Iraq. Several members of the Swedish parliament called on the world community to act for the protection of the Christian Assyrians, who are being targeted by Islamists in war torn Iraq. Kalle Larsson from the Swedish left oriented party Vänsterpartiet said that Assyrians have the right to form their own autonomous region in Iraq. Assyrians from many different organizations participated in the demonstration. Also participating were representatives of all the Assyrian church denominations.
ABC-Austalia Interviews Rosie Malek-Yonan
Stephen Crittenden:
Rosie Malek-Yonan: The Assyrian people are the indigenous people actually of Mesopotamia, before it even was Iraq. All of that area was Mesopotamia and is the original homeland of the Assyrians. They date back to over 6,000 years and were always concentrated in that region. Stephen Crittenden: And Christianity was accepted by Assyrians, well virtually in apostolic times, right at the very, very beginning? Rosie Malek-Yonan: Right. Assyrians were actually the first nation to accept Christianity as an entire nation, not just individuals, but the entire nation, and we built the first church of the east. Stephen Crittenden: And what about language? Aramaic for church, but what language does a typical Assyrian family in Baghdad speak at home? Rosie Malek-Yonan: Well the language that we typically speak is the modern Assyrian, which comes from the ancient Aramian, which is the language of Christ. The church liturgy still uses the ancient language, and we grew up learning it, and understanding it and knowing it, but it's not typically used at home. At home we generally will speak the more modern Assyrian dialect. Stephen Crittenden: Now in early May, a fatwah was issued by a militant Sunni group in Baghdad, calling on the Christians in a particular suburb of Baghdad called Dora, to convert to Islam or die. Rosie Malek-Yonan: Yes. Actually as we are speaking, I'm getting bombarded with emails, and one of them is a plea to help the Assyrians of Iraq. The women in particular - I'll just read you a little bit of this email - says the Virgin Mary put on a hijab (hijab is the covering) so why not all Christian women dress the same? They are asking all women to dress in that fashion. Stephen Crittenden: I understand there's a lot of kidnapping and murdering of particularly of young kids? Rosie Malek-Yonan: Absolutely. Our children are being murdered, they're being kidnapped for ransom, even when the ransom is paid they're still killed. Priests are being beheaded, nuns are being killed, and not just a beheading, they behead them, they cut also arms and legs, they hack them off and they return them in that manner. Little children, their heads are bashed with concrete blocks. This has been going on since the beginning of the Iraq War. This is isn't just an isolated incident here or there, this is an ongoing genocide. Stephen Crittenden: I understand that there were 1.4-million Christians in Iraq before the American invasion, in 2003, and that many left at that time, and went particularly to Syria. How many are left? Rosie Malek-Yonan: In Iraq there's probably between 600,000 and 800,000 left. The majority of the refugees that are now stranded in Syria and Jordan 40% of them are Christian Assyrians. They are not protected, they have nowhere to go, they have no shelter, they have no food, they're living in the streets in poverty. Stephen Crittenden: And 300 families just in the last month, have been driven out of Baghdad. Rosie Malek-Yonan: Yes. They don't know where to go. Right now they are taking refuge in churches, they take refuge in wherever they can. Stephen Crittenden: How were the Assyrian Christians treated under Saddam Hussein?
Rosie Malek-Yonan: The situation is terribly worse now. It was much better for them then. They thought it was bad then. All the things that the Kurds had been complaining about during Saddam's regime now they are doing those things to the Assyrians, because the goal is to drive Assyrians out of the northern region so that the Kurds can take over that entire region. Stephen Crittenden: Indeed, in your testimony before Congress last year, you talked about the fact that Assyrians also have a problem with the Kurds, almost as though the Assyrians in Iraq are even lower on the pecking order than the Kurds. Rosie Malek-Yonan: Oh, absolutely. But now the Kurds have become powerful because the US is assisting them. So if they get assistance and Assyrians don't, the result is that they're going to bully the Assyrians out of there. They want them out of that area, they want to take the entire area and a so-called Kurdistan region and make it a Kurdistan region. Minus the Assyrians. Stephen Crittenden: What are the American troops in Baghdad doing about these developments of the last month or so? Rosie Malek-Yonan: They're doing absolutely nothing. If they were doing something, we would see something, we would see just a glimmer of hope, but there's nothing there. I mean there's reports of them saying 'We're not here to save you, we're not here to help you.' Stephen Crittenden: Rosie, there are reports that the persecution of Christians in Baghdad at the moment is being directed by the imams in the mosques, that the loudspeakers in the mosques are telling Muslims to seize the property of their Christian neighbours and carry out their fatwah, that it's not just criminal elements, it's being directed from the mosques. Rosie Malek-Yonan: Oh, of course. I mean look, any time we go to war with the Middle East, it is going to become a religious war. The Assyrians wear the face of Christianity, we are the first that are going to get hit. Our properties get seized, our homes are taken, and our lives are taken. That goes without a doubt, and of course it's the religious leaders that are doing this. It comes from them, and it also on the other hand, comes from the Kurds. We are getting it from every side, it's not just one element, and we're isolated, with absolutely no assistance. And the thing is, since 2003 when Assyrians started getting hit, we have never retaliated. We have never hit back; we have never fired back. They burnt more than 30 churches in Iraq. Not once has an Assyrian gone to burn a mosque in retaliation. Stephen Crittenden: Rosie, you've devoted a lot of time, you've written a novel, and last year you made a documentary film to draw public awareness to the Assyrian genocide that took place at the same time that the much better known Armenian genocide was taking place, both at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I. Tell us about the Assyrian genocide. Rosie Malek-Yonan: The Assyrian genocide started in 1914 with the onset of World War I. It began in the hands of the Ottoman Turks, with the help of the Kurds and Persia at that time, or Iran as we know it now. The Assyrians that were being massacred were in South East Turkey (Hakkari), and also in the Urmia Region, which is north-western Iran. And this went on for nearly four years, till the end of World War I. But I believe more than that, there has been an ongoing, slow genocide that the Assyrian people have been caught up in. And actually even before the 1914 World War I Assyrian genocide, it began in 1895 in Diyarbekir where about 55,000 Assyrians were killed and about another 100,000 were forcibly Islamicised. Stephen Crittenden: This is in Turkey? Rosie Malek-Yonan: Yes, and this really paved the way for the Assyrian genocide in the shadows of World War I, with two-thirds of the Assyrian population totalling 750,000 were annihilated by the Ottoman Turks, Kurds, and Persians. And their crime was only being Christian, but it didn't stop there. Again, 1933 in Iraq, the Semele Massacre, we saw 3,000 Assyrian men, women, children unarmed, massacred by the Iraqi Army, and Kurdish warlords, and again, the Iranian Revolution, we saw what that did to the Assyrian population in Iran. Stephen Crittenden: Just repeat for us Rosie, what is the estimate of the number of Assyrians who died in the 1914-1918 genocide? Rosie Malek-Yonan: 1914-1918, 750,000 Assyrians. That's two-thirds of our population. Two out of three Assyrians died. Stephen Crittenden: Well many Assyrians have left. There's a big Assyrian diaspora; where are they to be found in the largest numbers around the world? Rosie Malek-Yonan: Around the world there is a very large number in Chicago; nearly 100,000 Assyrians in Chicago. And when I use the term 'Assyrian', I'm not differentiating the different religious denominations, whether they're Catholic, Calvians, or Protestants or Church of the East, I'm using the term as a general term for all Assyrians. So we have a big population in Chicago, in Detroit, in San Diego, in Sweden, Södertälje, Sweden, we have a huge, huge community of Assyrians. A lot of the refugees from Iraq are finding their way to Sweden. So we're pretty much spread all over the world. The one thing I want to touch upon is when we don't address a genocide, or a massacre of a nation, it will keep on happening. When in World War I the Assyrian genocide was not addressed, and to this day there are people that don't know about it, that just set the precedent for the same thing to happen again. World War II, Jewish Holocaust. Hitler was the one who said 'Who remembers the Armenians?' By then Assyrians weren't even in the picture any more, because we don't deal with these issues, we just let them happen, we turn a blind eye. The bottom line is that the Assyrians in Iraq, they have to be protected, just like the Kurds were protected back in 1991. They were given a safe zone. We need an Assyrian safe zone. This has to be done, and it could only be done if the US decides to help them to do this, and the UN steps in. Stephen Crittenden: Thank you very much for being on the program. Rosie Malek-Yonan: Thank you. Out of Iraq, A Flight of Chaldeans Courtesy of the San Antonio Express (ZNDA: Detroit) The journey north from Guatemala through Mexico to the Texas border lasted 17 days. Finally, on the evening of Feb. 26, 2006, the young family of four saw the river come into view. Weary and beaten, with the baby starting to fuss, the family was driven in a car right up to the Rio Grande. And there, it stopped in a cloud of dust.
George and his wife, Baida, were Iraqi refugees. They fled their homeland because Muslim extremists had made two things clear: They didn't like the family's Christian faith, for one. What was worse, to the gunmen prowling the neighborhood, were the sons' names, George and Toni, which seemed to lionize President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The decision to hire a smuggler to get them to America was clinched after militants told George Sr., a milk delivery man, that he was next on the beheading list for being an "infidel Christian," and after caregivers at their children's nursery became untrustworthy. "People started calling him George Bush ... so we stopped sending him to school in fear of him getting kidnapped," Baida, a hair stylist, later would tell American authorities. "Same thing with my young baby, Toni; they called him Tony Blair." The journey from Iraq to the Texas border had been expensive and risky, especially moving inconspicuously with two young children through hostile, foreign terrain. But looking at the river, the family realized this was more than just a border. It was a river. They would have to swim across. None of them knew how. Baida refused. George, too, couldn't bring himself to do it. The Mexican laborers who waited nearby for darkness got them going. Amused, the men urged the couple on, offering to help with the children. My God, George thought, I came all this distance and there's America, finally, just right over there. And now you just have to do it. So, with the help of the Mexicans, George waded in, carrying his older son over his head. The family had come too far to go back. (The San Antonio Express-News has agreed to withhold the family's full name to prevent retaliation against other relatives still in Iraq.) They had done what hundreds of thousands of other Christian Iraqi families have since the American invasion: sold everything in the face of horrific and systematic religious persecution, and fled north to Damascus, Syria, or Amman, Jordan. Out of options, the family joined an increasing number of such refugees who are proceeding toward America, bent on crossing the border illegally. A flight of Christians Alarms go off along American borders among federal law enforcement authorities whenever immigrants from certain countries in the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia are discovered crossing illegally. Thousands have since 9-11, and when caught they're automatically labeled by the government as "special-interest aliens" and can be subjected to FBI interrogation and investigation as potential terrorists. Since the war in Iraq spawned aggressive insurgent activity against American troops, the alarms have grown especially shrill when the captured immigrants are Iraqis. Those caught crossing illegally in Texas and elsewhere along the southern border, however, are more likely victims of Islamic terrorists, the Express-News found after six months examining the topic. Still, border guards and federal agents can't be certain and have to employ special screening procedures to find out. The war has set off a massive exodus that, ironically, has driven more Iraqis to America, making counter-terrorism officials all the more strained and anxious about who is crossing the border and what they intend. Chaldean Christians are an ancient ethnic minority of Catholics who made up about 4 percent of Iraq's population. More than 600,000 of them, half the Chaldean population in Iraq, are thought to have fled the war to neighboring countries. Chaldean Christian refugees in the U.S., Syria and Jordan say the American-led war unleashed Islamic militants who have targeted them because of their religion in vicious campaigns of murder, kidnapping for ransom and forced property expropriations. Ordinarily, religious persecution can qualify victims for U.S. resettlement visas. But the U.S. State Department hasn't issued visas to Chaldeans and won't recognize them as especially persecuted for their religion, asserting that they are among many groups amid Iraq's sectarian strife who could make the claim. So they wait. While most are sitting out the war as refugees in Syria and Jordan, other Chaldean Christians have chosen not to. They are coming illegally to Texas, and to other border states, sometimes getting entangled along the way, in entire families, pregnant women, single mothers and young men going it alone or in small groups. "They know there was nothing for them, so therefore they have to create an act of desperation like this," said Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Detroit-based Chaldean Federation of America. "Those people, most of them, were able to get some money, or sell homes before they fled Iraq, and the smugglers know about them and so they go to them and talk about smuggling them." U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show only about 100 Iraqis have been caught at the borders between 9-11 and the end of last year, more than 60 of them along the Southwest border and about 20 in Texas. But those relatively small numbers don't account for the months of this year when refugee outflows from Iraq have jumped. In April, five Iraqi families with children were in detention at the federal T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor after Border Patrol agents picked them up in Texas and California; a half-dozen were in custody in the San Diego, Calif., area; 11 Iraqis were caught at a Mexican airport; and Belize authorities were trying to figure out what to do with 10 U.S.-bound Iraqis abandoned by their smuggler.
Umru "Crazy Tiger" Hassan, an interpreter for the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq until Islamists threatened to kill him, personifies the situation. Hassan, a Christian, divulged to the Express-News in Damascus that he was on his way to Texas. Islamic militants in Iraq had threatened Hassan's life not because of his work with the U.S. military but because he had married a Muslim woman. They came around one day to let him know he'd better convert. "It was a big problem," he said of the marriage, which is now on the rocks. "It was, 'Hey you, if you don't want to be Muslim, we're going to kill you.' But I'm not changing my religion. Why should I?" He left his military job and went to Damascus about six months ago, where he and his sister make a subsistence living running a tiny laundry called "Iraq Cleaning." He was frustrated there with the lack of opportunity and money. So Hassan decided a more prudent course was to plot a route to Texas. He said Hispanic soldiers with whom he was serving told him how easy it was to cross the Mexico-Texas border, and they offered the help of their own families in Mexico. He plans to take advantage of the offer. "If I make it successfully in this way, I'm going to bring my family the same way," said Hassan, who has a young daughter still in Iraq. Lobby campaign stalled Long before 9-11 and the war in Iraq, Chaldean Christians were sneaking across the U.S. southern border, mostly hoping to join relatives among the roughly 250,000 Chaldean Christians who have settled in major cities such as San Diego and Detroit. Many of the Iraqi Christians have the financial means and the will to immigrate. In Iraq, as in the U.S., they tend to be educators, professionals and business owners. Several U.S. prosecutions of smuggling rings that have specialized in Middle East clientele show that Chaldean Iraqis long have been favored because they tend to be affluent, or have relatives in the States who can pay smuggling fees of $8,000 to $25,000. In almost every case, Iraqi Christians declare political asylum once they make it to U.S. soil. Indeed, these days, an Iraqi Christian stands a much better chance of gaining legal residency by coming across illegally than by applying for a visa. For the past 18 months, the Chaldean Federation has lobbied the U.S. State Department and Homeland Security Department to issue 160,000 visas for Iraqi Christians on grounds of religious persecution. "We would like them all to be admitted, like the Vietnamese," Kassab said. "They took 135,000 Vietnamese refugees in 10 months under President Ford. We want something similar to that." The initiative has run headlong into a domestic political debate over Iraq war policy in which the Bush administration is not eager to acknowledge a permanent refugee problem by resettling large numbers. Last year, the Bush administration granted about 5,500 admission visas for all of the Middle East, of which only 500 were earmarked for Iraqis, and none specifically for Chaldean Christians. The number of visas earmarked for the Middle East next fiscal year was increased from about 7,000 to 25,000, and the Chaldeans expect some. Officials have reportedly told Chaldean Christian leaders in the U.S. that a need to conduct thorough security background checks on all Iraqis who might be considered for resettlement has stalled the process. "We know the big stumbling block at this time is the security check," Kassab said. "They don't want to budge on this issue. They consider all Iraqis the same. If anything, our people are victims of terrorists; they are not terrorists." Peter Eisenhauer, spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, cited a different reason for not resettling Chaldean Christians in large numbers. "We weren't going to do a population like that because there are a number of different Iraqi groups that are also vulnerable and at risk," he said. The experience of several Chaldean Christian Iraqis caught crossing the Texas border shows the security dilemma American homeland security personnel face when one is caught. Iraqi refugee Aamr Bahnan Boles, who was profiled last week in an Express-News series, found himself detained and sentenced to six months in prison with two other men who said they are Iraqi Christians because they couldn't prove who they were. The Federation's Kassab said he's well aware that border authorities especially fear that a real terrorist from Iraq might try to pose as a Chaldean Christian. Kassab thinks he has a solution: The federation has drafted a set of secret answers to cultural and religious questions that could be asked of any Iraqi who claims to be a Chaldean Christian. Kassab said he may be making headway on the issue. Recently, he said, the federation was allowed to train 25 immigration asylum officers and judges in Chicago in how to identify a Chaldean Christian with a high degree of certainty. Pain in Detroit Much anguish can be found in Detroit's churches, Chaldean-owned restaurants and domino parlors where men smoke shisha pipes on Sundays after Mass. The war has engulfed them with news of murdered loved ones and displaced families. There are mixed emotions about who's to blame for what has befallen the Chaldeans. In the era of Saddam Hussein, many Christians felt protected from Arab Muslims. Some were left alone and flourished in business, academia and the professions. Top Saddam adviser Tariq Aziz is a Chaldean Christian.
Since Saddam's ouster, Arab militias have ravaged Christian communities. Father Jacob Yasso, who has presided over the Sacred Heart Church and Chaldean Community Center on Detroit's West 7-Mile Street for more than 30 years, said he believes America owes admission to Chaldeans trapped and suffering overseas. He remains proud of a picture of himself giving Saddam the key to Detroit's Chaldean community 30 years ago, after the dictator gave him $1.5 million to build his church and community center. "America owes the Chaldeans justice," he said. "Let us come. Let us come." As the stalemate between Detroit and Washington continues, thousands of Iraqi Christians in Syria and Jordan dutifully register with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a first step to securing resettlement visas to Europe or North America, and in some cases Australia and New Zealand. But all too often that portends an indefinite wait that some are simply not willing to tolerate while scrabbling for a meager living in the dusty working-class tenement suburbs of Damascus and Amman. George and Baida decided to flee to prevent this from happening to them. They raised $32,000 by selling their house, furniture, cars and salon equipment at cut-rate prices, then fled to Damascus. There, they found, according to Baida, that "everybody is planning to go someplace — everyone." George said he easily found a smuggler, a Jordanian who gave no name or information. He paid the smuggler $10,000. For that, the smuggler provided airline tickets and Guatemalan and Cuban visas for the family, as well as arranging a safe house in Guatemala City. The family members flew to Moscow and then Cuba, where they spent three days in a hotel with no running water and buckets of water with which to flush toilets. Once in Guatemala, the family settled in for a couple of months in a Guatemala City safe house, a tidy home owned by a woman named "Maria" who charged $100 a month rent. She grew so attached to George and Toni that when the time came she personally arranged for the best Guatemala smuggler she could find to shepherd the family to the Texas border. The man only gave his name as "Miguel" and charged $15,000. "He charged me extra because of the kids," George said. "I didn't care; I just wanted to get my kids to America." The following weeks were a blur of transferring from car to truck to van, staying in safe houses or sleeping in cars, and hiding under blankets in the backs of pickups. Miguel never once strayed from the family's side, his word given to Maria not to, and he made sure to provide all of the family's needs. Through it all, the parents worried about what would happen to their children if they were caught, and even more about bandits and killers who prey on immigrants. They fed the kids chicken, tortillas, rice and cookies. When 9-month-old Toni would start to cry at a moment when silence was necessary, Baida would breast-feed him. A candy bar kept the older boy quiet when necessary. After they swam the Rio Grande, Miguel told them: "This is America. You're safe now." They hugged Miguel and he turned back to the river. Once on the Texas side, not far from the rural town of Los Indios, everyone in the group scattered through the brush, leaving the family to stumble on in the dark. Eventually, George found a convenience store and hailed a taxi, water still dripping from his clothes. He asked the cabdriver to take the family to the nearest Border Patrol station. When they arrived at one in Brownsville, George told the clerk on duty what most Chaldean Christians are taught to say in such situations: "I am an Iraqi Christian. I want asylum." Unlike other Iraqi special interest immigrants, the family members were released relatively quickly after some cursory interviews and a terror watch list check. After all, how many real terrorists bring their toddlers along? They're now with George's brother in Muskegon, Mich., living in a small two-bedroom apartment. They await a verdict on their asylum claim in Brownville. In Michigan, George said he is looking forward to "a normal life in America" where he can send his two boys to good schools and no one will politicize their names. To show his appreciation to his new country, he pledged one of his two boys to serve in the U.S. military — when they grow up. "They have to serve their country," George Sr. said. "This country helped us, and we have to help America." Malankara Syrian Orthodox Family Conference in Europe (ZNDA: Basil) Between 18 and 20 May, the Europen Family Conference of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Christians was held in Bienenberg, near Basel. Nearly 300 Syrian Christians, including women and children, from Sharjah, Ireland, U.K, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, Netherland and Switzerland attended the event under the divine leadership of HG Dr. Kuriakose Mor Theophilose, Archbishop of Europe & Middle East. In the evening of 19 May representatives of the sister churches attended the cultural event which was inaugerated by Mrs. Elena Jakob-Banz, a memebr of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch in Switzerland and Kantonsrätin SZ.
Preserve Eastern Traditions, Pope Urges the New Courtesy of the Catholic World News (ZNDA: Vatican) Pope Benedict XVI met on May 28 with Major Archbishop Issac Cleemis Thottunkal of Trivandrum, The Indian prelate was visiting Rome for the first time since becoming the head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. In paying tribute to the Syro-Malankara Catholic tradition, Pope Benedict said that he was "most grateful" to the Indian archbishop for his "eager wish to 'see Peter.'" Archbishop Thottunkal was named in February to head the Trivandrum archdiocese, and thus the leader of the world's 500,000 Syro-Malankara faithful. Pope Benedict noted: "The precious heritage of your ecclesial tradition was placed in the hands of your Beatitude through the act of canonical election conducted by the Fathers of the Syro-Malankara Synod." The Pope offered his prayers for the welfare of the Eastern Church, and said that fidelity to the Syro-Malankara tradition "will enable the whole Church to benefit from what, in his manifold wisdom, 'the Spirit is saying to the churches.'" The Syro-Malankara Church boasts a heritage stretching back to St. Thomas the Apostle, whose missionary activity reached to the subcontinent. The "Thomas Christians" eventually became Nestorians, affiliated with the Assyrian Church. But when Catholic explorers from Portugal colonized India, European missionaries restored ties with the Holy See. During the 17th century, Indian Christians, resentful of the Portuguese influence which they felt was destroying their Assyrian tradition, left the Catholic Church. However, they did not re-establish their relationship with the Assyrian church. Instead, when the Syrian Orthodox patriarch offered to take the Indian Christians under his care, they agreed--at the price of adopting the Syrian liturgy, and leaving behind their Assyrian heritage. The resulting Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church was itself split early in the 20th century, and one group of bishops sought to be reconciled with Rome. By the middle of the century the trickle had become a flood, and the Syro-Malankara Church was growing rapidly. Today the number of Syro-Malankars is approaching 500,000--nearly all of them living in the Indian state of Kerala. In 2005, Pope John Paul II raised Archbishop Cyril Mar Baselios Malancharuvil of Trivandrum, the head of the Syro-Malankara Church, to the title of Major Archbishop. His death in January 2007 led to the appointment of Archbishop Thottunkal.
Syria Interfering in Assyrian Church Affairs Courtesy of the EasternStar News Agency & the Assyrian International News Agency
(ZNDA: Germany) His Holiness Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, based in Syria, has suspended Archbishop Julius Hanna Aydin of Germany, according to the EasternStar News Agency. According to Archbishop Aydin, his suspension is because a powerful block of pro-Syria bishops in the Church opposes him because he is not a Syrian national. On 18 February, 2007, Raban Hanna Aydin was ordained Metropolitan and given the title Mor Julius by His Holiness Mor Ignatius Zaka I Iwas at a solemn ceremony held at the St. Peter & St. Paul Cathedral in Maarat Saydnya, Damascus. His Holiness later appointed Metropolitan Mor Julius Hanna Aydin as patriarchal vicar for Northern Germany. The sunthroniso of Mor Julius was held on 4 March 007 at the Monastery of Mor Ya`qub of Sarug in the Westfalian city of Warburg, Germany. Archbishop Aydin was one of the founders of the Aramean Movement in Europe, which held that Assyrians are Arameans. This caused a schism within the Assyrian community and within the church body. Recently Archbishop Aydin recanted his support for the Aramean Movement and regreted having caused divisions within the Assyrian community. "Assyrians, Arameans and Chaldeans, no matter what we call ourselves we are one people and must be united,." he says. According to some Assyrians in Germany, the Syrian secret service (mukhabarat) has undue influence over bishops in Syria and is attempting to divide Germany into three different Episcopal sees to more easily exert influence over the Assyrians. Some church officials have stated that Syria does not want the Assyrians to unite. Archbishop Aydin, they point out, constituted no threat to the Syrian government and its representatives within the Syriac Orthodox Church in Germany when he was an anti-Assyrian. It was when he advocated unity and building bridges between different groups that he was stopped. Fathers of the Zodiac Tracked Down Courtesy of Nature
Using modern techniques — and some rocks — a US astronomer has traced the origin of a set of ancient clay tablets to a precise date and place. The tablets show constellations thought to be precursors of the present-day zodiac. The tablets, known collectively as MUL.APIN, contain nearly 200 astronomical observations, including measurements related to several constellations. They are written in cuneiform, a Middle-Eastern script that is one of the oldest known forms of writing, and were made in Babylon around 687 BC. But most archaeologists believe that the tablets are transcriptions of much earlier observations made by Assyrian astronomers. Just how much older has been disputed — the estimates go back to 2,300 BC. Now Brad Schaefer, an astronomer at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, says he has dated the observations to 1,370 BC, give or take a century. The tablets contain a number of different observations, including the day each year that certain constellations first appeared in the dawn sky. These dates change over the millennia because of a tiny wobble in the Earth's axis. "It's like a big hour hand in the sky," Schaefer says. By studying these dates and other astronomical information, such as the dates certain constellations were directly overhead, Schaefer nailed down the year the measurements were taken. He also worked out that the ancient observers lived within roughly 100 kilometres of 35.1° N — an area that includes the ancient Assyrian cities of Ninova and Asur. The results were presented at the American Astronomical Society's summer meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. Star gazing To double-check his measurements, Schaefer did his own observations at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of Texas. Rather than using the observatory's massive 9.2-metre telescope, he stood outside and gazed at the stars. "The best equipment I used was rocks to mark where my feet were," he says. Nevertheless, these measurements allowed him to pinpoint his own position and date more precisely than he could those of the Assyrian astronomers. He is not sure why his measurements worked better. Schaefer's work will help settle a long-standing debate, says Hermann Hunger, an Assyriologist at the University of Vienna in Austria. Previously, historians had based their arguments on single stars or constellations on the tablets. Schaefer's statistical analysis of all the observations on the tablets "will impress historians who cannot do the same on their own — including myself", Hunger says. He adds that most historians have settled on a rough date of 1,000 BC for the tablets, which agrees well with Schaefer's analysis. Mesopotamian Nights Courtesy of the Modesto Bee
(ZNDA: Modesto) Five thousand years ago, in the magical age of heroes and demons, a group of people in the land that now is Iraq and Syria worshipped Inanna, goddess of love. Townsend Opera Players is premièring excerpts from a new opera about this enigmatic figure as part of a collaboration with the Central Valley chapter of the Assyrian Aid Society of America. Written by Indiana composer John Craton, the opera was inspired by the ancient Inanna poems, believed written by a high priestess in 3000 B.C. The English-language production focuses on three stories: the tale of the huluppu tree, the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi and Inanna’s descent to the underworld. Tony Khoshaba, president of the aid society, said he learned about the opera on the Internet and asked Craton and TOP to stage it in Modesto because it reflects his people’s heritage. TOP will debut the work at its “Classics by the Creek” fund-raiser Sunday and then perform it at the Assyrian Aid Society’s “A Mesopotamian Night Under the Stars” fund-raiser June 30, emceed by former Turlock resident Narsai David, a popular Bay Area food guru. TOP founding director Erik Buck Townsend is considering staging the full production at the Gallo Center for the Arts. “I listened to the music and it sounded intriguing,” he said. “It’s very harmonic to our ears -- some of it is a little off the wall, but it’s not dissonant at all.” At least three singers will perform the excerpts, wearing elaborate costumes designed and painstakingly constructed by Turlock’s Irene Warda. She made them for Assyrian festivals but said she is happy to have them used in the performances. “I don’t want to keep them in the closet,” she said. “I want people to see them. I love to show my culture.” In a recent phone interview, Craton said he was thrilled that someone was interested in finally staging his work. He completed the opera in 2003 but has had trouble finding a group to present it because it has a large cast and is expensive to produce. Craton decided to write the opera after reading several translations of the Inanna poems. “Anything that old to me is rather enchanting,” he said. “To learn that people that many years ago were very much people like we are today. The world was different but people were the same.” Khoshaba hopes the opera will draw a crowd to the “Mesopotamian Night” fund-raiser, which will help support Assyrian Christians facing persecution in Iraq. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune reported that Christians were fleeing Baghdad’s Dora district in droves after | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
