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The Assyrian struggle for Independence was waged by the Assyrian Patriarch and the chiefs (Assyrian: malik) of the Assyrians between 1843 and 1933, with later assistance from the British Empire, against the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, the Persian Empire, the Kingdom of Iraq, the French Mandate of Syria, and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia.
As Austen Henry Layard, the British Empire's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, wrote, the Assyrians survived the Arab, Mongol, and Kurdish conquests in the mountains of Hakkari, where they fought to maintain their independence in the nineteenth century.[1] As Professor Abraham Yohannan of Columbia University wrote in 1916, the Assyrians "are a sturdy people who, like the Kurds about them, have maintained a state of semi-independence and have been more or less able to defend themselves against attacks."[2] The traditional Assyrian homeland extends from the Tigris river into northeastern Persia.[3]
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Assyrians in present Turkey primarily lived in the provinces of Hakkari, Şırnak, and Mardin. These areas also had a sizable Kurdish population. Starting in the nineteenth century, the Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians of eastern Anatolia, including the Hakkari mountains in Van province, were the subject of forced relocations and executions, a possible cause being religious persecution of the Christian community of Anatolia.
At the outset of World War I, approximately one half of the Assyrian population lived in what is today Southern Turkey. The Young Turks, an ultranationalist group, took control of the Ottoman Empire only five years before the beginning of World War I.[4] The Ottomans planned to join the side of the Central Powers and join the German Reich in dividing up the British and French empires in Asia.[5] In 1914, knowing that it was heading into the war, the Ottoman government passed a law that required the conscription of all young males into the Ottoman army to support the war effort. The Ottoman Empire entered World War I in October 1914 by bombarding Russian ports on the Black Sea.
In late 1914 and 1915, the Ottoman Empire under the Young Turk regime declared a holy war on the Christians of the Empire along with the British and Russian Empires, who were all grouped together as the enemies of Islam.[6] Ottoman Turks and Kurds proceeded to massacre tens of thousands of Assyrians in the Hakkari mountains of ancient Assyria (upper Mesopotamia, present-day southeastern Turkey) prior to any alliance between the Assyrians and the British or Russians.[7] The Patriarch of the Assyrians, Mar Shimun XIX Benjamin, declared war on the Ottomans on behalf of the Assyrian nation. The Assyrian army under General David, the patriarch's brother, led the Assyrians out of an encircling Ottoman army maneuver across the Persian border onto the plains of Urmia.
In April 1915 the Assyrian nation, led by its tribal chiefs of Baz, Jilu, Tyari, Tkhuma, and Diz "took arms against the Turks at the request of the Russians."[8] Over the summer of 1915 they held off the Ottoman army and 10,000 Kurdish militia and tribal forces fighting with the Ottomans. The Ottomans brought in artillery and ammunition that outmatched the Assyrians, however. The Russian Army Corps had promised reinforcements, which came too late, leading most of the population of the tribes and districts of Baz, Jilu, Tyari, Tkhuma, Tergawar, Mergawar, Bohtan, Barwari, Amadia and Seert to be massacred.[8] Some survivors joined the remnant of the Assyrian Persias from Salamas and Urmia to form an Assyro-Chaldean army, and had a real prospect of fighting with the Russians to evict the Ottoman forces from Russia, Persia, and historic Assyria until the Russian Revolution of 1917 dissolved the Russian army. Lacking allies except the British some miles away in Mesopotamia, the Assyrians planned to follow the Russian lines to the Caucasus, but the Allies (including British, French, and Russian diplomats) urged Mar Shimoun and the Assyrian army to defend the Allied-Ottoman front lines, and enjoy autonomy and independence in the post-war period as their reward.[8]
An Assyrian nation under British and Russian protection was promised the Assyrians first by Russian officers, and later confirmed by Captain Gracey of the British Intelligence Service. Based on these representations, the Assyrians of Hakkari, under their Mar Shimun XXIX Benjamin and the Assyrian tribal chiefs "decided to side with the Allies, first with Christian Russia, and next with the British, in the hope that they might secure after the victory, a self-government for the Assyrians."[9] The French also joined the alliance with the Assyrians, offering them 20,000 rifles, and the Assyrian army grew to 20,000 men co-led by Agha Petrus Elie of Baz, and Malik Khoshaba of Tiyari.[10]
In October 1914, 71 Assyrian men of Gawar were arrested and taken to the local government centre in Bashkale and killed.[11] Also in April, Kurdish troops surrounded the village of Tel Mozilt and imprisoned 475 men (among them, Reverend Gabrial, the famous red-bearded priest). The following morning, the prisoners were taken out in rows of four and shot. Arguments rose between the Kurds and the Ottoman officials on what to do with the women and orphans left behind. At about this time, in Seert the Turks and Kurds "assembled all the children of from six to fifteen years and carried them off to the headquarters of the police. There they led the poor little things to the top of a mountain known as Ras-el Hadjar and cut their throats one by one, throwing their bodies into an abyss.[12] In April 1915, Ottoman Troops easily invaded Gawar, a region of Hakkari, and massacred the entire population.[13]
In late 1915, Cevdet Bey, Military Governor of Van Province, upon entering Siirt (or Seert) with 8,000 soldiers whom he himself called "The Butchers' Battalion" (Turkish: Kasap Taburu),[14] ordered the massacre of almost 20,000 Assyrian civilians in at least 30 villages. Cevdet is reported to have held a meeting in February 1915 at which he said, "We have cleansed the Armenians and Syriac [Christian]s from Azerbaijan, and we will do the same in Van".[15] The following is a list[14] documenting the villages that were attacked by Cevdet's soldiers and the estimated number of Assyrian deaths:
| Sairt - 2,000[16] | Sadagh - 2,000 | Mar-Gourya - 1,000 | Guedianes - 500 | Hadide - 1,000 | Harevena - 200 | |
| Redwan - 500 | Dehok - 500 | Ketmes - 1,000 | Der-Chemch - 200 | Piros - 1,000 | Der-Mar-Yacoub- 500 | |
| Tentas - 500 | Tellimchar - 1,500 | Ketmes - 1,000 | Telnevor - 500 | Benkof - 200 | Bekend - 500 | |
| Altaktanie - 500 | Goredj - 500 | Galwaye - 500 | Der-Mazen - 300 | Der-Rabban - 300 | Charnakh - 200 | |
| Artoun - 1,000 | Ain-Dare - 200 | Berke - 500 | Archkanes - 500 | |||
The village of Sairt/Seert, was populated by Assyrians and Armenians. Seert was the seat of a Chaldean Archbishop, the orientalist Addai Scher who was murdered by the Kurds.
On March 3, 1918, the Ottoman army led by Kurdish soldiers, assassinated one of the most important Assyrian leaders at the time, Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin. This resulted in Malik Khoshaba counterattacking the Ottomans, so that some 30 soldiers were killed or wounded.
The Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4, 1922, memorandum that the total death toll was unknown, but it estimated that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914 and 1918.[17] The Times of London was perhaps the first widely respected publication to document the fact that 250,000 Assyrians and Chaldeans eventually died in the Ottoman genocide of Christians, a figure which many journalists and scholars have subsequently accepted.... As the Earl of Listowel, speaking in the House of Lords on 28 November 1933, stated, ‘‘the Assyrians fought on our side during the war,’’ and made ‘‘enormous sacrifices,’’ having ‘‘lost altogether by the end of the War about two-thirds of their total number.’'.... About half of the Assyrian nation died of murder, disease, or exposure as refugees during the war, according to the head of the Anglican Church, which had a mission to the Assyrians.
Scholars have placed the number of Assyrian victims at 250,000 to 500,000.[18][19][20][21][22]
Contemporary sources usually speak of the events in terms of an Assyrian genocide, along with the Armenian genocide and Greek genocide by the Ottoman Empire. For example, the International Association of Genocide Scholars reached a consensus that "the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks."[23] After this resolution, the Dictionary of Genocide co-authored by eminent genocide scholar Samuel Totten, an expert on Holocaust education and the genocide in Darfur, contained an entry on the "Assyrian genocide."[18] The President of Genocide Watch, Gregory Stanton, endorsed the "repudiation by the world's leading genocide scholars of the Turkish government's ninety year denial of the Ottoman Empire's genocides against its Christian populations, including Assyrians, Greeks, and Armenians."[24]
The death toll of the Assyrian genocide was approximately 250,000, according to contemporary and more recent sources. "In 1918, according to the Los Angeles Times, Ambassador Morgenthau confirmed that the Ottoman Empire had 'massacred fully 2,000,000 men, women, and children -- Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians; fully 1,500,000 Armenians.'"[25] With 250,000 Greeks among the dead, that makes Ambassador Morgenthau's estimate of Assyrian deaths about 250,000.[26]
The Ottoman forces threatened Urmia and northwestern Persia after the Russian Revolution (1917) in October 1917. The Assyrians, led by Assyrian general Agha Petros held them off until June 1918, at which point they were again encircled and had no choice but to break through to their British allies across the border in Mesopotamia. Up to 100,000 Assyrians left Persia in 1918, but around half died of Turkish and Kurdish massacres and related outbreaks of starvation and disease. About 80 percent of Assyrian clergy and spiritual leaders had perished, threatening the nation's ability to survive as a unit.[27]
Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University, wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal that[28] the Assyrian city of Urmia was "completely wiped out, the inhabitants massacred," with 200 surrounding villages ravaged, 200,000 of Assyrian dead, and hundreds of thousands more Assyrians starving to death in exile from their agricultural lands. The Associated Press reported that in the vicinity of Urmia, ‘‘Turkish regular troops and Kurds are persecuting and massacring Assyrian Christians.’’ The victims included 800 massacred near Urmia, and 2,000 dead from disease. Two hundred Assyrians were burned to death inside a church, and the Russians had discovered more than 700 bodies of massacre victims in the village of Hafdewan outside Urmia, ‘‘mostly naked and mutilated,’’ some with gunshot wounds, others decapitated, and still others carved to pieces. Other leading British and American newspapers corroborated these accounts of the Assyrian genocide. The New York Times reported on 11 October that 12,000 Persian Christians had died of massacre, hunger, or disease; thousands of girls as young as seven had been raped or forcibly converted to Islam; Christian villages had been destroyed, and three-fourths of these Christian villages were burned to the ground.[29]
In Iraq, the Assyrians joined the Kurds and Arabs in celebrating the Ottoman defeat, and joining the levies of the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. Up to 1921 the Levies had consisted of Arabs, Kurds, Turkomans. Now that Iraq Army was to be formed, the Arabs would be required to join it rather than to go to Levies. It was decided to enlist Assyrians in the Levies. In July 1922 Orders were issued in which no more Arabs were to be enlisted as they were required to join the new Iraqi Army, those serving could not re-engage, A 1922 Treaty between Great Britain and Iraq allowed for the continued existence of the Levies as "local forces of the Imperial garrison" and that its members were "members of the British Forces who are inhabitants of Iraq".[30] By 1923 the ethnic composition of the Iraq Levies was half Assyrian and half Kurd, plus an attached battalion of Marsh Arabs and a few Turkomans. The original Levies were not Assyrians until 1928 when the levies became entirely Assyrian.
As a high British official in Mesopotamia wrote in 1933: "As they became more disciplined they rendered excellent service; during the Arab rebellion of 1920 they displayed, under conditions of the greatest trial, steadfast loyalty to their British officers."[31]
In 1931 Assyrian levies and Iraqi army units were patrolling Barzan district. Government troops implied government control, which Shaykh Ahmad still wanted to avoid.[32]
On October 23, 1931, the Catholicos of the Church of the East, Mar Eshai Shimun, and the maliks of the Jilu, Baz, Tkhuma, and Upper Tiyari tribes wrote to the Chairman of the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations to request resettlement out of Iraq, to French Syria or any other country in the League that would accept them as refugees. The Patriarch wrote that: "The Assyrian Nation which is temporarily living in Iraq, ... have unanimously held a Conference with me in Mosul on the 20th October 1931. At this Conference were present the temporal and spiritual leaders of the Assyrian Nation in its entirely as it will be observed from the document quoted above bearing the leaders' signatures." He goes on to say that at the conference, "it was unanimously decided by all those present that it is quite impossible for us to live in Iraq." He added that "together with the undermentioned signatories being the responsible leaders of the Assyrian Nation" wanted to inform the League that the Assyrians, "which in past centuries numbered millions but reduced to a very small number due to repeated persecutions and massacres that faced us, ... have been able to preserve our Language and Faith up to the present time." He conclused that "WE ARE POSITIVELY SURE THAT IF WE REMAIN IN IRAQ, we shall be exterminated in the course of few years."[33]
On June 1, 1932 the Assyrian levies presented a signed memorial to their Commanding Officer stating that "all the men had decided to cease serving as from 1st July." The reason was Britain had "failed adequately to ensure the future of the Assyrian nation after the termination of their mandate over Iraq."[34]
"They had dug trenches and were determined on destroying the Assyrians and taking their properties and possessions. Assyrians painfully remembered the massacre of 1933 in Simele and the surrounding villages and pledged "Never Again!". They remembered the raping and pillaging of defenseless Assyrian villagers." [35]
In early 1933, the American representative in Iraq, Paul Knabenshue, described public animosity towards the Assyrians as reaching a 'fever' pitch.[36] With Iraq's independence, the new Assyrian spiritual-temporal leader, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, demanded that the Assyrians be given autonomy within Iraq, seeking support from Britain. He pressed his case before the League of Nations in 1932. His followers planned to resign from the Assyrian levies (a levy under the command of the British, serving British interests), and to re-group as a militia and concentrate in the north, creating a de facto Assyrian enclave. In June 1933, the Patriarch was invited to Baghdad for negotiations with Hikmat Sulayman’s government and was detained there after refusing to relinquish temporal authority. Mar Shimun would eventually be exiled to Cyprus, thus forcing the head of the Assyrian Church of the East to be located in Chicago to this day.[37]
In early August 1933, the chiefs of the Tkhuma Tribe and the Tiyari led more than 1,000 Assyrians who had been refused asylum in Syria in crossing the border to return to their villages in Northern Iraq, where their wives and children had remained. The French, who at the time were controlling Syria, had notified the Iraqis that the Assyrians were not armed; but while the Iraqi soldiers were disarming those whose arms had been returned, shots were fired resulting in 30 Iraqi and Assyrian casualties. Anti-Assyrian and Anti-British xenophobia, apparent throughout the crisis, accelerated.[38] Reports circulated of Assyrian mutilation of Iraqi soldiers (later proven to be false). In Baghdad, the government panicked, fearing disaster as the Assyrians presented a formidable fighting force that could provoke a general uprising in the north. The government unleashed Kurdish irregulars who killed some 120 inhabitants of two Assyrian villages in the week of August 2 to August 9 (with most of the massacre occurring on August 7). Then on August 11, Kurdish general Bakr Sidqi (who had clashed with Assyrians before) led a march to what was then one of the most heavily inhabited Assyrian area in Iraq, the Simele district.
The Assyrian population of the district of Simele was indiscriminately massacred; men women, and children. In one room alone, eighty one Assyrians of Baz tribe were massacred.[39] Religious leaders were prime targets; eight Assyrian priests were killed during the massacre, including one beheaded and another burned alive.[40] Girls were raped and women violated and made to march naked before the Muslim army commanders.[39] Holy books were used as fuel for burning girls. Children were run over by military cars. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were flung in the air and pierced with bayonets.
Back in the city of Nohadra, 600 Assyrians were killed by Sidqi's men.[39]
In the end, around 65 Assyrian villages were targeted in the Mosul and Dohuk districts.[41][42]
The Semele or Simele Massacre is the term used to describe the systematic targeting of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933. The term is used to describe not only the massacre of Simele, but also the killing spree that continued among 63 Assyrian villages in the Dohuk and Mosul districts that led to the deaths of an estimated 3,000 innocent Assyrians.[43][44]
The Simele Massacre of the Assyrian people is often regarded as a phase of the Assyrian genocide beginning in August 1914 in the early days of what became World War I. By 1933, an estimated two-thirds of their population was massacred by Ottoman Turks and Kurds.[17]
| List of targeted villages [42] | |||||||||||||
| Ala Keena | Bameri | Betershy | Dairke | Gond Naze | Kaserezden | Korekavana | Majel Makhte | Sirchuri | |||||
| Aloka | Barcawra | Betafrey | Dair Kishnik | Harkonda | Kerry | Kowashey | Rabibyia | Shekhidra | |||||
| Badalliya | Baroshkey | Bidari | Derjendy | Idleb | Kitba | Lazga | Rekawa | Spendarook | |||||
| Baderden | Basorik | Biswaya | Fishkhabour | Kaberto | Khalata | Mansouriya | Sar Shorey | Tal Zet | |||||
| Bagerey | Bastikey | Carbeli | Garvaly | Karpel | Kharab Koli | Mawani | Sezary | Tel Khish | |||||
| Bakhitmey | Benaringee | Chem Jehaney | Gereban | Karshen | Kharsheniya | Qasr Yazdin | Sidzari | Zeniyat | |||||
Today, most of these villages are inhabited by Kurds. The main campaign lasted until August 16, but violent raids on Assyrians were being reported up to the end of the month. After the campaign, Badr Sidqi was invited to Baghdad for a victory rally.[45] The campaign resulted in one third of the Assyrian population of Iraq fleeing to Syria.[46]
Immediately after the massacre and the shutting down of the Assyrian uprising, the Iraqi government demanded a conscription bill. Non-Assyrian Iraqi tribesmen offered to serve in the Iraqi army, to counter the Assyrians. In late August, the government of Mosul demanded that the central government ‘ruthlessly’ stamp out the rebellion, and that it eliminate all foreign influence in Iraqi affairs, and that the government take immediate steps to enact a law for compulsory military service. The next week, 49 Kurdish tribal chieftains joined in a pro-conscription telegram to the government, expressing thanks for punishing the ‘Assyrian insurgents’,[38] stating that a "nation can be proud of itself only through its power, and since evidence of this power is the army,"[38] they requested compulsory military service. Rashid Ali presented the bill to the parliament. His government fell before it was legislated and Jamil Midfai’s government enacted conscription in January 1934.[47]
The massacre would eventually lead to 15,000 Assyrians leaving the Nineveh Plains for neighboring French Mandate of Syria, and create 35 new villages on the banks of the Khabur River.[41]
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, was directly influenced by the story of this massacre.[48] The Simele massacre inspired Lemkin to create the concept of "Genocide".[49] In 1933, Lemkin made a presentation to the Legal Council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid, for which he prepared an essay on the Crime of Barbarity as a crime against international law. The concept of the crime, which later evolved into the idea of genocide, was based the Simele massacre, the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust.[49][50]
The British and Soviet Allies used the Iraq Levies, many of whom were Assyrians, to resist German efforts to gain a foothold in the Middle East.[51] The Iraq Levies distinguished themselves in May 1941 during the Anglo-Iraqi War.
In the early days of World War II, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani came to power as Prime Minister of Iraq. As one of his first acts, he sent an Iraqi artillery force to confront the RAF base situated in Habbaniya, RAF Habbaniya. By the end of April, the Iraqi armed forces were situated in strong positions on the escarpment above the base and a siege began.
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (Arabic: محمد أمين الحسيني 1895/1897 - July 4, 1974), was the choice of the Nazis and Italian fascists to make inroads into the Middle East, including Iraq. A veteran of the Ottoman army, from 1921 to 1948 he was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
As early as 1920, al-Husayni was active in both opposing the British in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab State and opposing Jewish immigration and the establishment of their National home in Palestine. His oppositional role peaked during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. In 1937, wanted by the British, he fled Palestine and took refuge successively in Lebanon, Iraq, Italy and finally Nazi Germany where he met Adolf Hitler in 1941.[52] He asked Germany to oppose, as part of the Arab struggle for independence, the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
al-Husayni was still in the Kingdom of Iraq when, on 1 April 1941, pro-German Rashid Ali and his pro-German "Golden Square" supporters staged a coup d'etat. The 1941 Iraqi coup d'état caused the pro-British Regent Abdul Ilah to flee and the pro-British Prime Minister Taha al-Hashimi to resign. From his base in Iraq, al-Husayni issued a fatwa for a holy war against Britain in May. Less than days later, the Rashid Ali government collapsed, Regent Abdul Ilah returned, and British troops occupied the country.
Iraq had been a major supplier of petroleum to the Allied war effort and represented an important landbridge between British forces in Egypt and India. To secure Iraq, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered General Archibald Wavell to protect the air base at Habbaniya.
During 1940/41 Iraq joined the Axis powers and the Battle of Habbaniya took place. At Habbaniya, the besieging Iraqis demanded the cessation of all training activities and of all flights in and out of the base.
The commander at RAF Habbaniya, Air Vice-Marshal Harry George Smart, responded to the Iraqi demands by launching a pre-emptive strike against the Iraqi forces overlooking the air base. During the Rashid Ali rebellion in 1941 the base was besieged by the Iraqi Army encamped on the overlooking plateau. The subsequent arrival of a relief column (Kingcol), part of Habforce sent from Palestine, then a British mandate, combined with the Habbaniya units to force the rebel forces to retreat to Baghdad. The Levies then recruited an additional 11,000 men, mostly Assyrians but also some Kurd and Yezidi.
The siege was lifted by the units based at Habbaniya, including pilots from the training school, a battalion of the King's Own Royal Regiment flown in at the last moment, Number 1 Armoured Car Company RAF, and the RAF's Iraq Levies. This action initiated the Anglo-Iraqi War. Within a week, the Iraqis abandoned the escarpment. By mid-May, British forces from Habbaniya had moved on to Fallujah and, after overcoming Iraqi resistance there, moved on to Baghdad. On 29 May, fearing a British onslaught, Gaylani fled to Persia. As a result, al-Husayni fled to Persia where he was granted legation asylum first by the Empire of Japan and then by Fascist Italy.
By 1942, the Iraq Levies consisted of a Headquarters, a Depot, Specialist Assyrian companies, 40 service companies and the 1st Parachute Company, which consisted of 75% Assyrian and 25% Kurd. The new Iraq Levies disciplinary code was based largely on the Indian Army Act. The Levies had 22 Assyrian companies, 5 Mixed Assyrian/Yizidi companies, 10 Kurdish companies, 4 Gulf Arab companies and 3 Baluchi companies. Eleven Assyrian companies served in World War II-era Palestine and another four served in Cyprus. The Parachute Company was attached to the Royal Marine Commando and were active in both Albania and Greece. The Iraq Levies was renamed the Royal Air Force Levies.
In 1945 after the Second World War 1945- the Iraq Levies were reduced to 60 British officers and 1,900 other ranks and the RAF Regiment took over command of the Levies. In 1946 the Iraq Levies battalions were redesignated as Wings and Squadrons to conform to the RAF Regiment procedure.