Things Fall Apart: Iraq
- Jun 27, 2014
- 26 min read
Arameans (Ara-me)
Assyria
Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu prior to the rise of the city state of Ashur and, after its fall, from 605 BC through to the late 7th century AD variously as Athura and also referenced as Atouria according to Strabo, Syria (Greek), Assyria (Latin) and Assuristan. The term Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were (and still are) centered.
The modern Assyrian Christian (AKA Chaldo-Assyrian) ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, south east Turkey and northwest Iran are the descendants of the ancient Assyrians (see Assyrian continuity).
The land of Subartu or Subar is mentioned in Bronze Age literature. The name also appears as Subari in the Amarna letters, and, in the form Šbr, in Ugarit, and came to be known as the Hurrians or Subarians and their country was known as Subir, Subartu or Shubar.
There are various alternate theories associating the ancient Subartu with one or more modern cultures, including Armenian or Kurdish tribes. Some scholars, such as Harvard Professor Mehrdad Izady, claim to have identified Subartu with the current Kurdish tribe of Zibaris inhabiting the northern ring around Mosul up to Hakkari in Turkey.
Urartu, corresponding to the biblical Kingdom of Ararat or Kingdom of Van, was an Iron Age kingdom centered round Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands. Strictly speaking, Urartu is the Assyrian term for a geographical region, while “kingdom of Urartu” or “Biainili lands” are terms used in modern historiography for the Proto-Armenian (Hurro-Urartian) speaking Iron Age state that arose in that region. Shubria was part of the Urartu confederation. Later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name Armenia.
In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian Orontid dynasty. In the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in 521 or 520 BC by the order of Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as Urartu in Assyrian is called Arminiya in Old Persian and Harminuia in Elamite.
Hurrian is an ergative, agglutinative language that, together with Urartian, constitutes the Hurro-Urartian family. I.M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin see similarities between Hurrian and the Northeast Caucasian languages, and thus place it in the Alarodian family.
Hurrian names occur sporadically in northwestern Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at Nuzi, Urkesh and other sites. They eventually infiltrated and occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley in the west to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the east.
It is generally believed that the speakers of this language originally came from the Armenian Highlands and spread over southeast Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.
I. J. Gelb and E. A. Speiser believed Semitic Subarians had been the linguistic and ethnic substratum of northern Mesopotamia since earliest times, while Hurrians were merely late arrivals, but it now seems that the Hurrians, or the Urartians, made up the local population in the area and that the semites were late arrivals.
Urartian is closely related to Hurrian, a somewhat better documented language attested for an earlier, non-overlapping period, approximately from 2000 BCE to 1200 BCE (written by native speakers until about 1350 BCE).
The two languages must have developed quite independently from approximately 2000 BCE onwards. Mitanni (Mi-ta-an-ni, also Mittani Mi-it-ta-ni) or Hanigalbat (Assyrian Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) or Naharin in ancient Egyptian texts was an Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC.
Although Urartian is not a direct continuation of any of the attested dialects of Hurrian, many of its features are best explained as innovative developments with respect to Hurrian as we know it from the preceding millennium. The closeness holds especially true of the so-called Old Hurrian dialect, known above all from Hurro-Hittite bilingual texts.
Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class governing a predominantly Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite Babylon and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia.
Linguists classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Armenian shares a number of major innovations with Greek, and some linguists group these two languages together with the Indo-Iranian family into a higher-level subgroup of Indo-European, which is defined by such shared innovations as the augment.
The large percentage of loans from Iranian languages initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. The distinctness of Armenian was only recognized when Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary.
W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was an early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine and the absence of inherited long vowels. However, unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy) is not necessarily considered evidence of a period of common isolated development.
Soviet linguist Igor Diakonov (1985) noted the presence in Old Armenian of what he calls a Caucasian substratum, identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages such as Udi.
Noting that the Hurro-Urartian peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium b.c., Diakonov identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian.
Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage.
However, according to the Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat, based on the Glottalic theory, suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 4th millennium BC in the Armenian Highland. It is an Indo-Hittite model and does not include the Anatolian languages in its scenario.
The phonological peculiarities proposed in the Glottalic theory would be best preserved in the Armenian language and the Germanic languages, the former assuming the role of the dialect which remained in situ, implied to be particularly archaic in spite of its late attestation.
The Proto-Greek language would be practically equivalent to Mycenaean Greek and date to the 17th century BC, closely associating Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (viz., Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites).
In prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria (and Subartu) was home to the Neolithic Jarmo culture c. 7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the centre of the Hassuna culture, c. 6000 BC.
The region of origin of the reconstructed Proto-Semitic language, ancestral to historical and modern Semitic languages in the Middle East, is still uncertain and much debated. However, a recent Bayesian analysis identified an origin for Semitic languages in the Levant (modern Syria and Lebanon) around 3750 BC with a later single introduction from what is now southern Arabia into the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia) around 800 BC.
During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Semitic Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism.
The influence of Sumerian (a language isolate, i.e. not related to any other language) on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a sprachbund.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere after the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD.
The cities of Assur (also spelled Ashur or Aššur) and Nineveh, together with a number of other towns and cities, existed since at least before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC (c. 2600 BC), although they appear to have been Sumerian-ruled administrative centres at this time, rather than independent states.
Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (northern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeastern Turkey), the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times, the last of which grew to be the largest and most powerful empire the world had yet seen.
Assyrian tradition lists an early Assyrian king named Ushpia as having dedicated the first temple to the god Ashur in the city in the 21st century BC. It is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name.
Ushpia was an early Assyrian king who ruled circa 2030 BC, according to the Assyrian King List (AKL). Like most other of the “kings who lived in tents”, his name is not regarded as Semitic, but more likely Hurrian.
Ushpia is also alleged to have founded the temple of Ashur at the city of Assur, according to the much later inscriptions of Shalmaneser I (13th century BC) and Esarhaddon (8th century BC). However, he has yet to be confirmed by contemporary artifacts and nothing else of him is known.
Teshub (also written Teshup or Tešup) was the Hurrian god of sky and storm. Theispas (also known as Teisheba or Teišeba) of Kumenu was the Araratian (Urartian) weather-god, notably the god of storms and thunder. He was also sometimes the god of war. He formed part of a triad along with Khaldi and Shivini. The ancient Araratian cities of Teyseba and Teishebaini were named after Theispas.
Persian and Greek sources state that Achaemenes was succeeded by his son Teispes, who would lead the Persians to conquer and settle in the Elamite city of Anshan in southern Iran. Teispes’ great-grandson Cyrus conquered the Medes and established the Persian Empire. Teispes is referred to as a son of Achaemenes in the Old Persian texts at Behistun.
The Achaemenid Empire (Old Persian: Pārsa; c. 550–330 BC), or First Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded in the 6th century BC by Cyrus the Great. The dynasty draws its name from king Achaemenes, who ruled Persis between 705 BC and 675 BC.
A similar concept in Sumerian mythology is me or parşu, one of the decrees of the gods foundational to those social institutions, religious practices, technologies, behaviors, mores, and human conditions that make civilization, as the Sumerians understood it, possible. They are fundamental to the Sumerian understanding of the relationship between humanity and the gods.
Parsua (earlier Parsuash, Parsumash) was an ancient land located near Lake Urmia between Zamua (formerly: Lullubi, a group of tribes during the 3rd millennium BC, from a region known as Lulubum, now the Sharazor plain of the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran) and Ellipi, in central Zagros to the southwest of Sanandaj, northwestern Iran. The name Parsua is from an old Iranian word *Parsava and it is presumed to mean border or borderland.
The Mushki were an Iron Age people of Anatolia, known from Assyrian sources. The name Mushki is applied to different peoples by different sources and at different times. It can mean the Phrygians (in Assyrian sources) or Proto-Armenians as well as the Mushki of Cappadocia, or all three, in which case it is synonymous with Armeno-Phrygian.
Two different groups are called Muški in the Assyrian sources (Diakonoff 1984:115), one from the 12th to 9th centuries, located near the confluence of the Arsanias and the Euphrates (“Eastern Mushki”), and the other in the 8th to 7th centuries, located in Cappadocia and Cilicia (“Western Mushki”). Assyrian sources identify the Western Mushki with the Phrygians, while Greek sources clearly distinguish between Phrygians and Moschoi.
The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture notes that “the Armenians according to Diakonoff, are then an amalgam of the Hurrian (and Urartians), Luvians and the Proto-Armenian Mushki (or Armeno-Phrygians) who carried their IE language eastwards across Anatolia.”
Armeno-Phrygian is a term for a minority supported claim of hypothetical people who are thought to have lived in the Armenian Highland as a group and then have separated to form the Phrygians and the Mushki of Cappadocia. It is also used for the language they are assumed to have spoken. It can also be used for a language branch including these languages, a branch of the Indo-European family or a sub-branch of the proposed Graeco-Armeno-Aryan or Armeno-Aryan branch.
Classification is difficult because little is known of Phrygian and virtually nothing of Mushki, while Proto-Armenian forms a subgroup with Hurro-Urartian, Greek, and Indo-Iranian. These subgroups are all Indo-European, with the exception of Hurro-Urartian.
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Conversion of Two Armenian-Syrian Families to Islam in Aleppo after ISIL Occupied their Area.
A video footage has recently emerged showing an old man who is claimed to be a member of one of two Armenian-Syrian families who have recently converted to Islam after al-Qaeda’s “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) occupied the area of Kafr Hamra in rural Aleppo, where these two families live.
The video shows a cleric in a mosque telling the audience that it was the good treatment of the old man’s Muslim neighbors that encouraged him to adopt Islam as his new religion. The same applies for his entire family as well as another family. The site khabararmani.com (Armenian news) reports that two Armenian families were forced to convert by ISIL, which contradicts the claims made by the cleric in the video.
Following the other day’s news that at the hands of the terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—which, nonetheless, claimed that the conversions were done “willingly”—new information has emerged concerning the recent killing of a young Armenian man, Minas, for refusing to convert to Islam, again at the hands of ISIL.
He was reportedly killed in one of ISIL’s dungeons in Aleppo, north Syria, which has a notable Armenian minority.
ISIL radicals execute and crucify man in Syria’s Raqqa:Video
As the Sunni terrorist group ISIS solidifies its gains hold on Iraqi cities, reports are beginning to emerge of exactly what life looks like for residents living under their control. Christians – according to multiple reports – have been ordered to pay a “protection tax” or jizya, a historical practice dating back to 7th century Christian minorities living under Islamic rule, if they are to remain in Mosul or other areas under ISIS control.
ISIL radicals execute and crucify man in Syria’s Raqqa: Video – See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1578445#sthash.abpcoyyi.dpuf
Members of Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and civilians have been excuted by ISIL members in Kadi askar area of Aleppo.
Members of Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and civilians have been excuted by ISIL members in Kadi askar area of Aleppo. – See more at: http://documents.sy/image.php?id=2656&lang=en#sthash.XHbtWgNF.dpuf
US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal (R) walk together upon Kerry’s arrival on June 27, 2014 at King Abdulaziz International Airport in the Saudi city of Jeddah. Who does he believe he is fooling?
US President Barack Obama on Thursday requested $500 million from Congress to train and arm militants fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are spilling over form Syria’s border into Iraq and threatening to overwhelm the country. Over the past days, heavy clashes have been underway between Iraqi armed forces and the ISIL terrorists, who have threatened to spread their acts of violence to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
“Obviously, in light of what has happened in Iraq, we have even more to talk about in terms of the moderate opposition in Syria, which has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against ISIL’s presence and to have them not just in Syria, but also in Iraq,” Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Syrian militant leader Ahmad al-Jarba.
Al-Jarba thanked the Obama administration for requesting the $500 million, but said his men want even more foreign aid for their so-far unsuccessful effort to oust Assad.
Washington has been openly supporting the armed opposition in Syria both financially and militarily in the years-long conflict that ravaged the Arab nation.
A recent report shows that the ISIL terrorists were trained by the CIA in Jordan more than two years ago. The report said that the militants were initially trained at the time as part of covert aid to the militants operating inside Syria.
Motorists know that if a fire breaks out at a petrol station, you cannot put it out by spraying it with gasoline. But according to recent reports, it seems the American president isn’t that smart.
On Friday we learned that Obama is asking Congress for $500 million for the so-called Syrian rebels. Apparently he does not realize that the problem he says he wants to solve – ISIL terrorists overrunning Iraq and Syria – was created by the US and its allies’ funding of the Syrian insurgents. Throwing more money at the “Syrian rebels” would be throwing gasoline on the fire.
Satellite imagery and photographs confirm that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have staged mass executions in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, which amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.
The growth of ISIS
The Obama administration has characterized Maliki as the problem precisely to absolve its responsibility for creating conditions for ISIS to thrive and expand, and also to downplay the destabilizing effects of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
The rise of ISIS is often described in US media as the unfortunate result of the Obama administration’s reluctance to support rebels in the Syrian civil war fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Proponents of regime change in Damascus argue that radical groups like ISIS have emerged due to insufficient support for moderate rebel groups.
This argument is entirely discredited by the substantial support given to rebel groups by the CIA, sanctioned by the Obama administration, which has supplied rebels with weapons, training, communications equipment, cash assets, and diplomatic backing. The United States has been heavily involved in coordinating rebel advances in Syria since the start of the war in 2011.
ISIS has emerged as the most efficient, disciplined, and well-funded jihadist group in history, and it cannot have arrived at this position without enormous funding and support from external forces. Washington’s direct involvement in aiding ISIS is difficult to ascertain, but the Obama administration cannot pretend to be unaware that Saudi Arabia – its closest ally in the region – has been financing ISIS and affiliated groups throughout the duration of the war.
As the principal state-sponsor of radical jihadist groups operating in Syria and the puritanical Wahhabi ideology, Saudi Arabia is the party most responsible for the rise of ISIS. The Obama administration has largely turned a blind eye to the Kingdom’s operations in Syria because radical fighters have proved to be the most effective on the battlefield. US allies such as Qatar and Turkey have also played a significant role in aiding the rebels, and by extension, ISIS.
Furthermore, the Obama administration has contributed multi-million dollar budgets to supplying Syrian rebels with weapons, which have logically found their way into the hands of the most proficient fighters, who are self-evidently in the ISIS camp. Other voices in the US political establishment claim that Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011, under an agreement made during the Bush administration, has contributed to the current crisis.
Despite how these arguments are weaved into the official narrative in the American media, Washington’s interventions, rather than its reluctance to intervene, have exacerbated the crises in Syria and Iraq. The violence and disorder plaguing Iraq cannot be divorced from the Iraq War and the legacy of Washington’s flawed attempts at nation building by the notorious neoconservatives following the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Paul Bremer, in his position as Governor of Iraq, entirely dismantled Iraq’s central government, state institutions, and armed forces with the stroke of a pen. Colonial divide and rule policies were put in place under the Bush administration that saw the rise of Shiites into positions of power to offset the Sunnis and the Baathists.
The failed attempt at nation building fueled sectarian divisions by favoring certain tribal groups and religious sects that were seen to be more advantageous and amenable to US interests, which inalterably and artificially restructured Iraqi society based on the dictates of neoconservative analysts and think-tanks.
Al-Qaeda and groups like it never existed in Iraq before the US occupation. Despite the deep sectarian rifts unfolding today, modern Iraq was known as a relatively secular state up until the 1970s. Divisions were still political rather than sectarian under Saddam Hussein, although his attempts to consolidate power by banning all political entities led to the politicization of places of worship, giving rise to political activism with more religious dimensions.
The sectarian explosion that has taken place since cannot be attributable to the previous regime. Figures such as Tony Blair and John Kerry have attempted to distance themselves from the anarchy of present day Iraq, but such unabashed dishonesty is to be expected from these men, who would prefer to blame Maliki for the disorder, primarily because he has moved too closely to Iran and has ceased to behave a like the leader of a US client regime.
The Obama administration isn’t wrong in calling for an inclusive leadership in Baghdad, but it is using the advance of ISIS – which it undeniably contributed to by varying degrees of separation – as a means for ushering in a friendlier government. Maliki was never the preference of Washington; he prioritized relations with Damascus and Tehran and rejected American demands that any US military forces stationed in Iraq be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits.
Iraq finds itself tangled in a complicated web of terrorism, interventionism, and sectarian violence. The immediate priority is pushing back against ISIS, which is seeking to create an Islamic state encompassing both Syria and Iraq into a borderless caliphate. Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has voiced his disapproval of US intervention, and likely suspects that Washington is aiming to shuffle the leadership in Baghdad to the detriment of Tehran.
As US airstrikes are soon expected, Baghdad will continue to look towards Iran for assistance, which will probably provide the kind of training and support that allowed the Syrian army to consolidate and make gains against ISIS across large swathes of Syria. An inclusive and coordinated multi-sectarian force would be critical in thwarting the advance of ISIS; whether such a path is even possible at this stage remains to be seen.
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Christian Community in Northern Iraq About to Vanish Forever
Armenians (Armenian: հայեր, hayer) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland, surrounding Mount Ararat, the highest peak of the region. Portasar is situated in the South of the Armenian Highlands, 15 km south-east from the old city Urha/Edessa, Urfa/ of Armenian Mesopatamia.
The discovery of the cultural layers/three layers/ of Portasar shows that it was a religious-ritual centre for sedentary people for several millenniums. The territory is in Armenian cultural area. Armenian is an Indo-European language.
Due to centuries-long foreign domination, a wide-ranging diaspora of around 5 million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry live outside of modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. With the exceptions of Georgia, Iran, Russia and the former Soviet states, the present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian Genocide.
Movses Khorenatsi, the important early medieval Armenian historian, wrote that the word Armenian originated from the name Armenak or Aram (the descendant of Hayk). The original Armenian name for the country was Hayk, later Hayastan (Armenian: Հայաստան), translated as the land of Haik, and consisting of the name of the ancient Mesopotamian god Haya (ha-ià) and the Iranian suffix ‘-stan’ (“land”).
Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus’s death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus, or Jude, sometimes identified with Jude, the brother of Jesus, but clearly distinguished from Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus prior to his crucifixion, and St. Bartholomew, usually identified with Nathanael.
The Armenian Apostolic Church honors Thaddeus along with Saint Bartholomew as its patron saints. In the Roman Catholic Church, he is the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes.
In the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became arguably the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the world’s oldest national church.
Assyria was a major Semitic kingdom, and often empire, of the Ancient Near East, existing as an independent state for a period of approximately nineteen centuries from c. 2500 BC to 605 BC, spanning the Early Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age.
Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (northern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeastern Turkey), the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times, the last of which grew to be the largest and most powerful empire the world had yet seen.
For a further thirteen centuries, from the end of the 7th century BC to the mid-7th century AD, it survived as a geo-political entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers, although a number of small Neo-Assyrian states arose at different times throughout this period.
Assyrians today are exclusively Christian, with most following the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox churches.
Aramean people (not to be confused with ‘Armenians’) speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Abraham, Moses and Jesus. They are the indigenous people of what was called in ancient times Aram-Nahrin, in our days it is called ‘Mesopotamia’.
Some Arameans today identify themselves with “Assyrians”, because of the spiritual colonial hate generating activities of the Western missionaries and diplomats in the Middle-East in 16th and 19th centuries. Other Arameans became known as “Chaldeans”. However all of them are Arameans.
A recently released report prepared by the Swedish-based NGO the World Council of Arameans (Syriacs) shows that many Aramean Syriacs fleeing the violence from Syria are smuggled to Europe via Turkey. However, they are sent to refugee camps or jails after being discovered.
The report, titled “Aramean (Syriac) Refugees from Syria into Greece via Turkey: A Case Study of Refugees in Need in Athens,” says Aramean migrants first try to reach Istanbul, then go to Greece and then on to a third country. However, many are sent to jail or to refugee camps after being discovered.
The ongoing situation
The violent Sunni uprising in Iraq has had many devastating effects in the region, but one that has gone relatively unnoticed is what appears to be the end of one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. The archbishop of the Chaldean Catholics in Mosul, a city recently overtaken by ISIS forces, has announced that the few remaining Christians have been forced to abandon the city.
Foreign Policy’s Christian Caryl reports: Since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, [Archbishop Emil Shimoun Nona] estimates, Mosul’s Christian population dwindled from 35,000 to some 3,000. “Now there is no one left,” he said. Most of them have joined the estimated 500,000 refugees who have fled the ISIS advance; many of the Christians, including the archbishop, have opted for the relative security of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The reluctant exodus from Mosul is a direct result of the ISIS jihadists’ reputation for violence, a reputation Caryl states has been “consciously furthered through its own propaganda”: A few days ago, the jihadists used social media to distribute photos supporting their claim that they had killed 1,700 Shiite prisoners taken during their rapid offensive. No sooner had ISIS entered Mosul than some of their fighters set fire to an Armenian church. This all seems consistent with the group’s grim record during the civil war in Syria, where, among other things, it has revived medieval Islamic restrictions on Christian populations.
Sadly, what has happened in Mosul has happened all over Iraq. What was an estimated 1.5 million Christian Iraqis (5% of the population) in 2003 has now dwindled to a tiny fraction of the number, an “overwhelming majority” leaving the country due to the escalation of violence at the hands of the militant radicals. The Roman Catholic Chaldeans, the Armenians, the Syriac Orthodox, and the Greek Orthodox communities have all but vanished in the war-torn country.
Caryl does note that there are some “faint glimmers of hope” for the restoration of Mosul’s multi-faith community, with reports of efforts by some Muslims to protect the city’s churches from looting and Islamists attempting to “assuage the fears of religious minorities in the city.” However, Caryl argues, Iraqi Christians “can hardly be blamed if they’re unwilling to bank on these faint glimmers of hope — the jihadists’ record speaks too eloquently against them.”
Things Fall Apart: Iraq
Scott Rickard, a former US intelligence linguist, from Atlanta, is saying that the United States were not surprised when it comes to the speed of ISIL. This was an organization that was very well trained by intelligence communities, not just Americans, British, French, Jordanian, Turkish.
We have seen this group now for a while operating in Syria and committing unbelievable crimes. It is a large organization that’s been operating in that region for several years, that’s very well funded. One week to two weeks prior they had Susan Rice and also Barack Obama announcing that they’re going to give another 27 million dollars to “moderate rebels”. This is the result.
The mistakes of U.S. foreign policy are mostly based on the same flawed idea: that the world is a chessboard on which the U.S. makes moves, or manipulates proxies to make moves, that either defeat, counter or occasionally face setbacks from the single opponent across the table.
The game held up for a fair amount of time; the U.S. versus the Nazis (D-Day = checkmate!), the U.S. versus Japan (Lose an important piece at Pearl Harbor, grab pawns island by island across the Pacific, and so forth). Most of the Cold War seemed to work this way.
And so into Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration seemed to believe they could invade Iraq, topple Saddam and little would be left to do but put away the unused chessmen and move on to the next game. In reality, world affairs do not (any longer?) exist in a bipolar game. Things are complex, and things fall apart. Here is a quick tour of that new form of game in Iraq.
Iran
– Iranian transport planes are making two daily flights of military equipment into Baghdad, 70 tons per flight, to resupply Iraqi security forces.
– Iran is flying Ababil surveillance drones over Iraq from Al Rashid airfield near Baghdad. Tehran also deployed an intelligence unit to intercept communications. General Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, visited Iraq at least twice to help Iraqi military advisers plot strategy. Iran has also deployed about a dozen other Quds Force officers to advise Iraqi commanders, and help mobilize more than 2,000 Shiite militiamen from southern Iraq.
– As many as ten divisions of Iranian military and Quds Force troops are massed on the border, ready to intevene if Baghdad comes under assault or if important Shiite shrines in cities like Samarra are threatened, American officials say.
– Suleimani was a presence in Iraq during the U.S. Occupation and helped direct attacks against American troops. In particular, Iraqi Shiite militias under the tutelage of Suleimani attacked American troops with powerful explosive devices supplied by Tehran. These shaped charges were among the very few weapons used toward the end of the U.S. Occupation that could pierce U.S. armor, and were directly responsible for the deaths of Americans.
– General Suleimani is also the current architect of Iranian military support in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. calls for Assad to give up power, and was steps away from war in Syria to remove Assad only months ago.
– Should America conduct air strikes in Iraq (some claim they are already stealthily underway), those strikes would be in direct support of Iranian efforts, and perhaps Iranian troops, on the ground.
– The United States has increased its manned and unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq, and is now flying about 30 to 35 missions a day. The American flights include F-18s and P-3 surveillance planes, as well as drones.
ISIS
– ISIS, currently seen as a direct threat to both Iraq, Syria and the Homeland, is a disparate group of mostly Sunni-affiliated fighters with strong ties to Syria. The U.S. is now at war with them, though it appears that as recently as 2012 the U.S. may have had Special Forces arming and training them at a secret base in Safawi, in Jordan’s northern desert region. There are reports that the U.S. also trained fighters at locations in Turkey, feeding them into the Syrian conflict against Assad.
– ISIS has been funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three supposed U.S. allies. “The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” a Brookings Institute report states.
– ISIS itself is a international group, though added 1,500 Sunni Iraqis it liberated from a Shia prison near Mosul. A senior U.S. intelligence official said there are approximately 10,000 ISIS fighters — roughly 7,000 in Syria and 3,000 in Iraq. There are between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign fighters who have been incorporated into ISIS ranks.
Turkey
– The New York Times reports Turkey allowed rebel groups of any stripe easy access across its borders to the battlefields in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad. An unknown number of Turks are now hostages in Iraq, and Turkey continues its tussles with the Kurds to (re)fine that border.
– “The fall of Mosul was the epitome of the failure of Turkish foreign policy over the last four years,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “I can’t disassociate what happened in Mosul from what happened in Syria.”
Iraq
– With the official Iraqi Army in disarray, Prime Minister Maliki is increasingly reliant on Shiite militias primarily loyal to individual warlords and clerics, such as the Madhi Army. Despite nine years of Occupation, the U.S. never defeated the Madhi Army. Prime Minister Maliki never had the group surrender its weapons, and now, with the Baghdad government too weak to disarm them, they exist as the private muscle of Iraq’s hardline Shias. Once loosed onto the battlefield, Maliki will not be able to control the militias. The Mahdi Army has also sworn to attack American “advisors” sent to Iraq, believing them to be a vanguard for a second U.S. occupation. Many of the most powerful militias owe their ultimate loyalty not to the Iraqi state, but to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr has much blood on his hands left over from the Occupation.
Syria and Israel
– Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 57 civilians and wounding 120. Syrian warplanes also killed at least 12 people in the eastern Iraqi city of Raqqa Wednesday morning. A U.S. official said it was not clear whether the Iraqi government requested or authorized Syrian air strikes in Iraqi territory.
– Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria the same day as Syria struck Iraq.
Checkmate
It should be clear that there is no such thing as simply “doing something” in this crisis for the U.S. As with the 2003 invasion itself, no action by the United States can stand alone, and every action by the United States will have regional, if not global, repercussions apparently far beyond America’s ability to even understand.
A chess game? Maybe, of sorts. While American interest in Iraq seems to parallel American interest in soccer, popping up when world events intrude before fading again, the other players in Iraq have been planning moves over the long game. In the blink of an eye, U.S. efforts in Syria have been exposed as fully-counterproductive toward greater U.S. goals, the U.S. has been drawn back into Iraq, with troops again on the ground in a Muslim war we thought we’d backed out of. The U.S. finds itself supporting Iranian ground forces, and partnering with militias well outside of any government control, with Special Forces working alongside potential suicide bombers who only a few years ago committed themselves to killing Americans in Iraq. What appears to be the U.S. “plan,” some sort of unity government, belies the fact that such unity has eluded U.S. efforts for almost eleven years of war in Iraq.
In such a complex, multiplayer game it can be hard to tell who is winning, but it is easy in this case to tell who is losing. Checkmate.
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