Country: Iraq

Group: Assyrian

Date Finalized: 9/27/2021

Team: Johanna McCombs (lead), Deneb Bobadilla, Ash Pessaran

Content Warning: religious persecution; targeted violence

Approximate Time Period: 1930-present

Assyrians live primarily in northern Iraq and generally follow one of several Christian denominations, including the Assyrian church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox Church. Christian Assyrians and Sunni Muslim Kurdish tribes coexisted peacefully in Iraq until tensions arose as a result of European penetration in the 1800s (Minority Rights, 2017). Throughout the 20th century, Sunni rulers persecuted Assyrians which caused many Assyrians to leave Hakkari, a place where they once achieved some autonomy (Minority Rights Group, 2015). In 1933, the Iraqi army committed a series of massacres against the Assyrians which resulted in 600 to 3,000 Assyrian deaths (Minority Rights Group, 2015). Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq from 1979-2003, began a genocidal campaign against ethnic and religious minorities in an attempt to enforce the ‘Arabization’ of Iraq (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The Saddam Hussein Ba’athist regime forced Assyrians to identify themselves as Arabs in order to maintain control over their homes, land and oil resources, and many who refused lost their homes (Human Rights Watch, 2004; University of Minnesota, 2021). From the mid 1900’s to 1990, approximately 40,000 Assyrians fled to neighboring countries to escape such persecution. More recently, from 1990 to 2000, Christians in Iraq represented 30% of those leaving Iraq although Christians only made up 3% of the total population (Petrosian, 2006).  

In the 21th century, the ethnic and religious civil war that began in 2003 in Iraq disproportionally affected Christian Assyrians (Hanish, 2011).  Faced with religious persecution and death threats to convert to Islam, many Assyrians moved to the Ninewa region of Iraq and areas controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (Minority Rights Group, 2015; New York Times, 2007). In August of 2014, ISIS took over the Ninewa region, causing a second wave of displacements to escape religious persecution and forced conversions. By mid-2014 almost all Assyrians had left Mosul, the Ninewa capital (Haider pp. 6-7, 2017).

For the Assyrians in Iraq experiencing displacement, the data quality is 3. There are numerous sources that are consistent with each other and provide clear documentation that the Assryians experienced displacement  in Iraq.

Sources

  1.  Human Rights Watch.Forced displacement and Arabization of Northern Iraq. (2004). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq0804/4.htm.
  2. Haider, H. (2017). The Persecution of Christians in the Middle East .https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/59786a0040f0b65dcb00000a/042-Persecution-of-Christians-in-the-Middle-East.pdf
  3. Hanish, S. (2011). Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in Iraq: The Chaldo-Assyrian Case. Digest of Middle East Studies, 20(2), 161–177. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-3606.2011.00090.x
  4. University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts’ wordmarkMass violence and genocide by the Islamic State/Daesh in Iraq and Syria. (2021). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/mass-violence-and-genocide-islamic-statedaesh.
  5. Minority Rights Group International. (2015 ). Iraq-Assyrians. Minority Rights. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/assyrians-2/
  6. Petrosian, V. (2006). Assyrians in Iraq. Iran & the Caucasus, 10(1), 113–147.