Historical Asymmetry: Mesopotamia's Assyrians

"An autonomous region. A safe haven. That's what the people want -- a homeland. We want to be able to protect ourselves."
"We hoped the Americans would help us regain our land, the way the Zionists did. But that didn't happen."
"We don't trust the Arabs, and we don't trust the Kurds. We don't want Iraq to fall apart. We want Iraq to stay together."
"But the Assyrians are not just a religious group. We are an ethnic minority, and we are losing our language and our culture. The world has to begin to see the Assyrian people not just as Christians, but as a distinct people. And we are being wiped out."
Juliana Taimoorazy, Iraqi Christian Relief Council

An Assyrian woman attends a mass in solidarity with Assyrians abducted by Islamic State fighters in Syria, March 1, 2015. Islamic State militants have taken hundreds of Assyrian prisoners in Iraq and Syria. Photo by Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

The Assyrians are an ancient, warfaring tribe from Mesopotamia, originally intent on gaining territorial advantage and engaging the indigenous tribes in the areas of the Middle East where their warring hordes challenged the commanding presence of others, to retreat and scatter elsewhere, leaving the Assyrian conquerors to have dominion over the lands they conquered.

They had a dominating, warring presence in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq and grew their empire by removing all challengers and ultimately through successes on the battlefield created great waves of migrants, among them the ancient Jewish tribes. Interestingly, the Assyrians adopted the worship of Judaic tradition as their own, to the chagrin of the Israelites, affronted that non-Jews would usurp Judaism. Since Christianity was born of Judaism, it seems that Christianity supplanted Judaism for the Assyrians eventually.

They still speak a kind of Aramaic. During the Ottoman Empire the Assyrians, as Christians, were horribly persecuted by Muslim Turkey, but they managed to survive despite mass slaughter. Ethnic cleansing that Saddam Hussein later imposed on them, and even later, during the Iranian Revolution the persecution suffered from that source was horrendous. Clearly, they had abandoned their feared warrior status that once identified them as brutal conquerors of the Middle East.

At the end of the 10th Century there were held to be one and a half million Assyrians in the Middle East. Since then, Minority Rights Group International has put their numbers in Iraq at 350,000, and fewer yet in Syria. Their existential concerns remain vibrantly fearful, targeted by both the Syrian regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, influencing the Assyrians to migrate or remain and become victims of genocidal intent against the region's Christians.

Ultimately, the Assyrians who choose to remain in their historical geography yearn for a country of their own where their homeland heritage would be recognized, and where they would be safe from the malign intentions of others. And they view Israel's establishment as a template for their own future. When  the world's attention was drawn to the plight of Yazidis victimized by ISIL on Iraq's Mount Sinjar, Assyrians hoped that their own plight would move the world to support their need for security, as well.

The support by the west of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq presented as yet another symbol of hope for the Assyrians. And even though the secularist KRG pledges to support the Assyrian minority, they remain wary and mistrustful, unwilling to be dependent on the Kurds. "At any moment, some mullah can declare a fatwa against us", said Taimoorazy dismissively.

The descent into jihadism in Syria and Iraq with its mass murder and sectarian conflict, exists as a threat to the Assyrians as a minority ethnic and religious group.