Church and Nation

April 2018
Church and Nation

By Max J. Joseph
“From you, Nineveh, has one come forth who plots evil against the Lord and devises wicked
plans.” – Nahum 1:11.
INTRODUCTION
Given the extremely delicate nature of this subject and a modern dialogue fraught with
smearing and needless confrontation, it took me longer to think about how to write this than it
did actually writing it — a process alien to me. I want to be as sincere and positive as I can be
without being negative, euphemistic or apologetic. The theme is just too important to ignore
with respect to our future: I want to discuss the relationship between Church and Nation for
Assyrians.
After the assault of ISIS into the Assyrian heartland of the Nineveh Plain in Iraq, the ongoing
neglect of the Federal Government, and betrayal and surrender of the land with no resistance
from our self-declared Kurdish protectors, we saw another exodus of Assyrians out and away
from the only part of our homeland left where we had any demographic concentration. This
last chapter of genocide has resulted in the Assyrian population being situated more in
diaspora than in the homeland for the first time in our venerable history.
The shift in demographics must coincide with the asking of ambitious, far-ranging questions
about what we must do now and how we must organize ourselves to resist annihilation. It is
my opinion that the asking of these questions cannot be the responsibility of organisations,
Church groups or political parties—they are responsible for mobilisation, social visibility, the
creation of Assyrian public space— these questions must be asked by individuals, regardless
of their religious affiliation, in order to come to some kind of inclusive consensus from which
to move forward together as one interconnected, living Assyrian nation.
This is an intellectual task that gives birth to real and effective work. Contemplating the
Assyrian Question for the last one hundred years since our genocide has produced failure
after failure as our battered and traumatized people try and navigate new and hostile states
moulded out of the wreckage of our homeland. Many of us have been periodically forced en
masse to live life on the run, settling in foreign lands and reminiscing about a past we never
truly lived. The diaspora Assyrian — this New Assyrian — carries an incredible sadness which
lies hidden. As Assyrian poet Sargon Boulos writes: “he tells and he tells and he tells,
because he has arrived but does not taste arrival.”
Many of us hunger for that sense of arrival, for that sense of being and belonging we have
been chronically deprived of. Many of us ultimately find comfort within all of our
Churches—our traditional sanctuaries during the brittle times of empire and alienation from
mainstream society we are so familiar with. The following discussion is not one in which I
angrily critique the role of our religious leaders in our political affairs (too much energy on
this has already been wasted within our community centres and internet forums) it is one
which starts with a simple premise: I am going to accept the primacy of religious leadership,
but I am going to critique it on its own terms in reference to history, without throwing my
support behind any single rival or group—as a predisposition or in conclusion.
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Church and Nation April 2018
THE MAR AWA ROYEL INTERVIEW

A recent interview with Church of the East bishop of California, Mar Awa Royel, was
conducted by Steve Netniss on The Assyrian Podcast. I found the substance of Mar Awa
Royel’s answers unsurprising and in sync with the general attitudes among all of our religious
institutions, especially the leadership. For the benefit of everyone, I have transcribed some of
it below followed by commentary—this will serve as the springboard into an expansive
discussion on the relationship between Church and Nation in the following sections:
MAR: “Are we really whole as a people? Are we really satisfied as a people? Are we fulfilled
as a nation? I would say no because we’re still on that road to get to where we need to be.
Until we get there — and [statehood] is on the minds and hearts of every Assyrian person, I
daresay — but that’s a process that takes many years and much sacrifice. And we may not
even see that in our lifetimes. So what’s to guarantee that process? What will help us advance
in that process? Now that’s where the Church comes in…”
MAR: “You have this early missionary work among the remnants of the Assyrian empire.
They had lost the Assyrian empire in 612 BC but now there is a new “empire” being formed
which is the Church, which is the kingdom of God — the Assyrians forming this empire,
which is spiritual in nature…”
Steve Netniss: “So you’re saying the Church has always been the one that’s always created a
land, whether it was inside the land or outside the land, it’s created a place for Assyrians to be
Assyrians?”
MAR: “It’s created a place and it’s created an identity for us […] So through the modern age
through to present — not that the name was not beginning to be used — but how was that
highlighted? It was through the Church.”
Steve: “So you’re saying the Church has been the place where the name Assyrian has been
preserved?”
MAR: “Of course.”
MAR: “The Eastern Churches are all ethnic Churches by nature. When you say the Russian
Orthodox Church, obviously the predominant makeup of the people is Russian. The Greek
Orthodox Church. The Armenian Apostolic Church. The Syriac Orthodox Church… You’re
not simply saying something about the theology of the Church but you’re saying: who are
these people? At one point, the Church of the East was not exclusively among the Assyrian
people, but because of centuries of persecution, today it is.”
Steve: “Isn’t it in India as well?”
MAR: “Yes, that’s correct. The original Church in India was that of the Church of the East
[…]”
Steve: “So if there is an Assyrian out there who doesn’t feel connected to the Church, they
ought to feel connected just by virtue of their ethnicity?
MAR: “Yes. Because it is the ethnic Church of our nation […] If you look at our Armenian
brothers and sisters, they have the same phenomenon. The Church is not simply where they
go to pray […] we have to realise as a people that does not have its own land, its own
territory, its own country; the Church is that land — the Church is our Country.”
Steve: “The world has changed and there isn’t very many nations that are led by their
religious figures. Or is there?
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MAR: “Of course there are. You have the Tibetans who are led by the Dalai Lama. You have
other ethnic groups that are out there… We fall in that same category.”
MAR: “The Church of the East has been the soul of this nation. It’s a historical fact. I don’t
need to make a plug for the Church. The Church doesn’t need a plug.”
THEMATIC CONTEXT
To understand where these answers are coming from, it is important to first understand our
own history and that of our neighbours. Assyrians have lived mostly under successive
Muslim empires or emirates since the Arab conquests. We often cite the 20th C Sykes-Picot
agreement as being responsible for the partitioning of our homeland among its four disparate
parts but our isolation and estrangement from each other happened much earlier: ever since
Assyria was toppled as the chief political power, it has been divided between the rise and fall
of Eastern and Western kingdoms and their corresponding spheres of influence. In the east,
you had the aforementioned Islamic empires, and in the west, you had the Greco-Roman-
Byzantine cultural and political continuum as well as the ascent of Catholicism.
Assyrians have been trying to navigate these fault lines since the loss of our sovereignty. We
have often paid the heaviest price for wars not of our making whilst feeling no benefit with
any settlement or victory—just the losses. As Mar Awa Royel said, Assyrians lost control of
their territorial sovereignty and focused on building a spiritual empire which could traverse
borders easier than regiments of infantry or cavalry. This impressively ranged as far as the
Americas all the way to Japan. It was a means for us to survive as we adapted to volatile
power struggles which we could not hope to influence with brute force. We also lost control
of writing our own national history—a fact we crucially neglect—and one which has
contributed to our religiously inspired identity crisis.
This state of affairs persisted up to the formation of the Ottoman Empire. During these five-
hundred or so years, we proceeded to live out our lives much in the same way as we did in
other territories hostile to us as a people such as modern day Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey:
either by disproportionately excelling in urban centres far and beyond what would normally
be required for a Muslim constituent (recalling the famous words of an Armenian doctor
early in the 20th C: “if I can heal them, they won’t kill me”) or in the administrative limbo
and wilderness of hard but honest village life in far-flung provinces.
The state organised genocide of the Ottoman Empire’s native Christian components brought
an end to the last period of our classical history, ushering in a new, bloody modern one. The
last one-hundred years can be characterised by the most terrible trauma and insecurity we
have ever faced—and that will be the main subject of this paper. We are firmly in an
existential crisis and this hastens the need to ask existential questions.
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HISTORY OF AN ERROR
Mar Eshai Shimun inspecting Assyrian soldiers before his exile and the Simele Massacre, Iraq 1932.
EASTERN CHURCHES, EASTERN NATIONS
Understanding the Armenian and Greek ‘ethnic Churches’ — of which we are believed to be
closely related to at least in terms of circumstance — and their relationship with their
respective national movements will serve as a solid foundation before moving onto
discussion of our own situation.
We would all ideally desire a harmonious relationship between our clerical and lay power
bases, but this was far from being the norm for Armenians and Greeks. Mar Awa Royel’s
referencing of these ethnic groups without any elaboration of the turmoil between the
nationalist and religious components within them is providing only a convenient part of a
story.
For example, the current [standing] Patriarch of the Armenian Church in Istanbul is a
handpicked loyal supporter of Turkish President Erdogan and the Islamist AK Party. This
support entails the denial of the genocide against his own people and the support of Turkish
politics more broadly, even going so far as condemning the German parliament in 2016 for
recognizing the genocide. Is this religious leader representative of Armenians, regardless of
the difficult circumstances in Turkey? Of course not.
In 1933, Armenian Archbishop Leon Tourian was assassinated in New York by members of
the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). This killing was done with the
intention of punishing a traitor for collaborating with the enemy and endorsing policies which
heavily undermined Armenian national interests. In the case of Tourian, living fully under the
Soviet yoke was something nationalists wanted to resist, yet he embraced. Even the modern
nations we look to as models of progress and democracy reserve their harshest punishments
for crimes of treason, and the Armenians absent a judicial court guaranteed and enforced by
state power were very much behaving with this principle in mind.
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Going back further to the Ottoman genocide, the patriarchate was the only official
representative institution for Ottoman Armenians, much like all Christian groups in the millet
system. The context Armenians found themselves in during these terrible years was
established by a series of events during the 19th C, especially with regards to the Russo-
Turkish war in 1877. Here, the Armenian experience served as precedent for how dealings
with Assyrians some decades later would transpire. Citing an important text on the
Destruction of the Armenian Church during the genocide:
On the one hand, despite the deepening crisis, the church in general remained a
conservative institution and rejected association with the opposition. Only a small
minority among the clergy participated in political activities. On the other hand, the
Patriarchate in Constantinople was also compelled to serve as a conduit for the
expression of Armenian grievances before the Sublime Porte, as well as in
international diplomatic relations. Patriarch Nerses Varzhabedian (1874–1884) and
the higher clergy generally encouraged loyalty to the sultan, and during the Russo-
Turkish war the patriarch issued an encyclical urging Armenians to support the
Ottoman army.
And when Russia was getting the upper hand, the Patriarch suddenly courted the Russians:
Growing protests by Armenians in the eastern provinces demanding protection from

their Turkish, Kurdish, and Circassian attackers, coupled with the Russian military
victories during the war, emboldened Patriarch Nerses to travel to San Stefano to
petition the czarist government to include in the post-war peace treaty a provision
granting administrative autonomy and protection for the physical security of his flock
in the Armenian provinces.
After a series of meetings in which the Armenians came to an arrangement with Russia, only
to have it reneged on and renegotiated by major European powers wary of growing Russian
influence on their Eastern flank, something started to happen: ordinary Armenians were
getting frustrated with the ineffective political bargaining monopolized by the Patriarchate
and began to independently mobilize along radical nationalist lines, breaking out of the millet
paradigm. This in turn reinvigorated the Patriarch’s loyalty to the Sultan—the status quo and
insurer of its authority which was now waning among his own people:
Growing disillusionment with the European powers and the inability of the Armenian
Church to effect changes led to the radicalization of Armenian nationalist movements
and the emergence of loosely structured groups such as the Union of Salvation
(founded in Van in 1872), the Black Cross Society (Van, 1878), and the Protectors of
the Fatherland (Erzurum, 1881). This was followed during the same decade by the
founding of the three major political parties: the Armenagan Party (Van, 1885), the
Hnchagian Party (Geneva, 1887), and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or
Tashnagtsutiun (Tiflis, 1890). While Armenians in general, albeit with great
trepidation, welcomed the party activists to their communities for the physical
security they promised, the socialist and revolutionary ideologies these parties
espoused nevertheless alarmed the more conservative institutions and classes.
The Armenian Church and members of the wealthier classes, who worked as bankers,
merchants, and civil servants in the capital and other major urban centers, viewed the
emerging nationalist movement among their compatriots as a nuisance and radical
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revolutionary activities as a direct threat to their status in official circles and society
at large. Alarmed by the growing Armenian militancy and determined to maintain the
status quo, Patriarch Nerses Varzhabedian, in a message to the Armenian National
Assembly, pledged loyalty to the sultan, with the expectation that the Sublime Porte
would implement the promised reforms. The patriarchate, for its part, would continue
to direct all efforts to ameliorate the Armenian situation with allegiance to the
Ottoman government in mind.
When new Patriarch Izmirlian began to throw his support behind these incendiary nationalist
movements, he was simply removed by the Sultan two years into his post, illustrating how
risky this position was to take. In Archbishop’s Ormanian’s words, there was “wide chasm
between Izmirlian’s expectations and political realities.” The leader of the millet was
expected to demonstrate allegiance first to the Sultan, and only then to his followers:
Patriarch Mateos Izmirlian (1894–1896) sought to reinvigorate the patriarchate after

a decade of decline, but his open support for the Armenian nationalist movement
undermined his own authority in relations with the Sublime Porte. The fact that
Patriarch Izmirlian had, in the eyes of the government, maintained close ties with
nationalists only exacerbated the situation and marginalized him.
Ormanian, who served after Izmirlian, once again shifted the political compass back towards
the Sultan and there it remained throughout the decades to come:
Archbishop Ormanian, who served until 1908, brought to the patriarchate enormous
energy in matters of cultural and educational affairs, as attested by such publications
as The Church of Armenia and, more significantly, by his Azkabadum (‘‘History of
the Nation’’). He was ardently loyal to the sultanate, but his ultra-conservative stance
on matters of reforms and socialist ideology rendered him unpopular among
Armenian activists.
One of the most crucial intellectual struggles Armenians were grappling with throughout all
of this was a mental as well as a physical liberation from the Ottoman millet system through
the brutal First World War period. With the ascent of the Young Turks—a group who
privately scorned the authority commanded by Islamic clerics, yet recognised the value of
mobilising for jihad—the nature of the oppression had evolved from one of simply Muslim
vs Christian to Turk vs Armenian. As Walker notes:
“The Armenians failed to grasp the nature of Turkism. They continued to see
themselves as Christians … Religion was an integral part of being an Ottoman
Armenian, so a nonreligious ideology was hard to comprehend. They found it almost
impossible to see what it meant to be up against a nonreligious, race-based
ideology.”
Sound familiar? Responses to this evolution were confused, and even involved intermittent
agitation by religious leaders to briefly create another Armenian millet in the Ottoman system
owing to political differences. Schisms and division of power among the religious leadership
was not often down to ecclesiastical matters, but involved the very real pursuit of power and
position afforded by the millet system. Assyrians were subject to the same pressures and we
are still enduring its effects today.
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Similarly, tension between Greek nationalists and their religious authorities reached its zenith
under Ottoman rule in 1821 during the Greek War of Independence. Patriarch Gregory V of
Constantinople and the Synod had anathematised and excommunicated both Ypsilantis, a
prominent Pontian Greek general, and Soutzos, a Greek prince, who were organising and
spearheading the rebellion. The Church had issued many encyclicals (authoritative religious
decrees) and an explicit condemnation of the Greek Revolution in line with the Church’s
Ottoman appeasement policy.
The Greeks revolted despite their own religious leadership’s categorical opposition. What
was Patriarch Gregory’s reward for being a loyal subject? After Easter services in 1821, he
was hanged in full Patriarch’s vestments for two days at the order of the Sultan who blamed
him for not being able to suppress the Greek rebellion despite his best efforts.
These are but some examples of struggling neighbouring ethnic groups in open conflict with
their conservative religious establishments. In the first scenario, treason was punished
directly by the Armenians who were undergoing a national awakening in order to adequately
confront threats to their existence from both internal and external sources. Clergy who were
sympathetic to growing nationalism did not last and were quickly removed by the status quo
who could normally rely on their loyalty. In the second, we can see that no matter how much
the policies of oppression are appeased, the reward for doing so is ultimately determined by
the success and fortune of the oppressor. These conflicts still somewhat persist today, even
long after the establishment of Greece and Armenia as sovereign states.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO US?
The modern Assyrian Church of East positions itself as the owners of the Assyrian nation by
using language such as “created an identity” and “ethnic Church” when referencing our
identity and origins. I stipulate modern, since the addition of “Assyrian” into the official
name of the Church was implemented in 1976 despite the Church’s formation well over one-
thousand years ago as the non-ethnically bound “Church of the East”. The Church of the East
was a multi-ethnic Church par excellence. So in a sense, the Church certainly has created an
identity for itself, but its claim that it has created an identity for the entire Assyrian nation is
difficult to accept when consulting history.
The mutation in title is a significant article to address in order to understand how the Church
of the East has responded and adapted to needs and pressures. This is further revealed by Mar
Awa Royel’s drawing parallels to the other Eastern Churches; he views all of these Churches
as products of individual ethnic groups and constructed in accordance to their own needs.
What is difficult to accept is the reference-making itself: all of these Churches have long,
incredibly complex histories. Equalising them to Church of the East, which has in real terms
had an altogether different history along with different priorities, is a simplistic way to
explain a very much voluntary decision to change the name of the Church.
The Assyrian name is almost primordial, it captures the core of who we are and the land we
are tied to. Assyrian has been the name which has united us past all denominational and
modern geographical differences and upheavals in our homelands. What happened in the
1970’s was a sectarian shift: the Assyrian name (in the form of Atoraya) suddenly became the
property of one of our Churches (with huge emphasis on one of our) by a few strokes of a
pen. Suddenly, the Assyrian name became associated with a single Church confined in
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influence to certain sections of our homeland and diaspora, rather than a diverse body of
people of which it rightfully belongs to.
Beyond failing to confine religious identify to a religious nomenclature; the imbuing a

religious identity with a sense of authenticity, truth, and superiority is the definition of
sectarianism, and we are not exempt from partaking in it. It is also not surprising that this
sectarianism coincided with the pronounced intellectual development (or more accurately,
regression) of the Chaldean and Syrian Churches, the latter of which is investigated by Augin
Haninke in his book, “Heirs of Patriarch Shaker”, which Mardean Isaac has reviewed.
Haninke describes the 20th Century descent of the Syrian Church into anti-Assyrianism,
which having been most pointedly expressed in the political posturing of Patriarch Elias
Shaker during the Ottoman genocide, continued and intensified ideologically with his
successor, Afrem I Barsom, and each successive Patriarch up until the present day.
Declassified Ottoman documents detail a monthly payment of 5,000 schillings made to Elias
Afendi (Shaker) starting from 1920 in order to secure his loyalty and ensure his silence, much
in the same way Patriarch Gregory was secured by then Sultan Mahmud II to exercise
ecclesiastical authority among the empire’s rebellious Greek constituents. After the ascent of
Kemal Ataturk, Shaker went as far as even declaring that the adherents of his Church were
“Turks”, renouncing not only any resistance to the political tyranny of Kemalism, but also
surrendering his own parishioners to Turkification. Patriarch Shaker was however spared the
noose after his usefulness had expired and the state’s programs were reaching completion—
he instead was exiled to India in 1930 where he died shortly afterwards in 1932.
The situation in India speaks of an even greater preoccupation with Church affairs. The
Syrian Orthodox Church could have boasted over three million adherents in India, but
schisms owing to interference from rival Christian sects and geopolitical events reduced this
number to a little over a million. Even with this number today, there are more ethnic Indians
who recognise Mar Aphrem II, the current Syrian Orthodox Patriarch, as the head of their
Church than ethnic Assyrians who do. This naturally influences the priorities of the Church.
What has continued since this turbulent time is a coy, isolationist approach from the Syrian
Orthodox Church towards the greater Assyrian community, even tacitly allowing the
fraudulent and parasitical Aramean movement to ride its coattails and shadow its leadership
without any definitive disassociation made. Not only do Arameanists find a space from which
to operate, but also the Dawronoye (“revolutionaries”) group: a creation and instrument of
the PKK to enlist, at first, Western Assyrians in their struggle against the Turkish state to
secure their rights within a Greater Kurdistan, and later, in Syria for “Rojava”. These are not
causal relationships, but complementary ones indicative of the disarray and confusion
endemic within Assyrian communities who are caught between the manufactured identity
politics of separatists and the political subterfuge of cowardly and treasonous individuals.
Yet despite all of this, many Assyrians who attend this Church or have been raised within it
know the truth and what is at stake: that they are Assyrian, and believe in Assyria. Many
were excommunicated by the Syrian Orthodox Church for identifying as such, even in the
safety of Europe. Thus, it’s incredibly sad to hear Mar Awa Royel refer to the “Syriac
Orthodox Church” in his discussion of foreign ethnic Churches. The implication here seems
to be that its adherents are not ethnic Assyrians, which is nothing short of sectarian—why
mention them in this context? Only two reasons exist: first, to validate the Syrian Orthodox
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separatist agenda, and second, to strengthen the exclusive bond his own Church has forged to
the Assyrian identity.
The Chaldean Church has undergone an extensive and rapid ideological transformation in the
last few years under the leadership of Mar Louis Sako. Sako was once a rising star and
believer in the oneness of our nation. In his recent addresses to his flock after the failed plan
of unity among our Churches under Rome, he has since abandoned his previous position in
favour of crafting a Chaldean national identity reminiscent of his predecessor, Mar Delly,
who reportedly exclaimed in 2006, “every Chaldean who says he is Assyrian is a traitor, and
so is every Assyrian who says he is a Chaldean”. From 2015 onwards, Sako now pursues this
strain of separatism in tandem with similarly transformed bishops such as Sarhad Jammo and
with all of the venom and single-mindedness associated with the very worst people we have
ever produced.
In December 2016, Sako personally intervened to forbid Assyrians in Belgium hosting Efrem
Yildiz, a respected scholar and adherent of the Chaldean Church, who was giving a lecture on
the Assyrian identity which challenged the ideology of separatism espoused by Sako. Sako’s
intervention severely limited the attendance of the lecture which was to be held on the
property of the Chaldean Church, but the lecture went ahead anyway given the respect Dr
Yildiz commands among the community. Ideologically, the threat was certainly felt by Sako
who was compelled into action. In another effort to sabotage the convergence of Assyrians
towards ends he has hasn’t personally endorsed: at the height of ISIS’ power in 2016, Sako
explicitly called for coalition forces to withhold support to the Nineveh Plain Protection Units
(NPU) in their struggle to liberate their towns from ISIS despite the force being
predominantly composed of Chaldean Catholic Assyrians native to the Nineveh Plain. These
are men who go to his own Church. Here, Sako only recognised the legitimacy of Iraqi and
Peshmerga forces and called on the coalition to support them, and not his own people.
Sako was even willing to whitewash the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. In a trip to Amid
(Diyarbakir) Turkey earlier in April 2015, he urged his flock to “move away from the mind-
set of war and struggle” and bowing to pressures within his own Church hierarchy and to
Turkish policy. Pope Francis called the Armenian genocide “the first genocide of the 20th
century” earlier that month (without recognising our own) provoking outrage from the
Turkish Government, to which Sako clarified whilst in Turkey:
"The pope did not want to blame the current Turkish government any more than the
Church today blames the Jews for killing Christ 2,000 years ago. We need to
understand the facts in the right perspective and not politicise them."
On matters concerning the assertion of Assyrian identity and suffering, the Catholic Church is
guilty of neglect steeped in self-interest at the best of times, and wilful undermining of it at
the worst of times. Historically, Catholic as well as Protestant missionaries were known to
keep diaries documenting their conversion of “Nestorian” Christians, bestowing onto them
new identities and forbidding them to mix with their “Nestorian” heretical kin. These
conversions often took place at times of great material lack and political turmoil facing their
Assyrian targets.
All Sako achieved here with his clarification was the further politicisation of an already
political issue—if genocide recognition and recovery from genocide are not political matters,
what is? And how often do the perpetrators of a genocide become the ones to regret,
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recognize and offer reparations for it? In any case, his posturing here serves the interests of
Rome, not his own people—a consistent pattern of behaviour among leadership figures
within the modern Chaldean Church. Chaldean Archbishop Mar Toma Audo of Urmia
described his love for his country and his “millat suryayta” in educational material created for
Assyrian schools in 1908—what we are seeing today is a total reversal of this sentiment.
In a way, Sako is doing the work of missionaries from hundreds of years ago. This work is
however not limited to his own functions: Bashar Warda, the Archbishop or Erbil, is
regularly seen rubbing shoulders with senior Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
officials, as well as foreign officials such as Mike Pence, the current Vice President of the
United States. Considering these activities together—the commentary on militias; the
discourse on genocide; the diplomatic trips—it was a matter of when and not if Sako would
formally join the political arena as a fully-fledged actor. And so the “Chaldean League” was
created as a list to contest the next Iraqi Elections in May 2018.
This assortment of Sako approved Chaldeanists, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) members
such as Lara Yousif—the KDP appointed mayor of Alqosh—and various other ageing
failures represents a sort of motley crew bound together by reasons so self-absorbed and
short-term they might quarrel and split at any given moment. One of the key positions which
define this group is rejecting even the modern Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac tri-name favoured
by people far too desperate for unity, however superficial it may be. Sako and followers have
proven that anything and everything can be compromised if one allows their political agenda
to be determined by oppressive foreign actors.
Lara Yousif speaking at the opening of a Chaldean League office in Alqosh, May 2017.
Mar Awa Royel’s claim that religious leaders can indeed still be leaders of nations is
lamentable considering the depressing terrain in which Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean
leaders have driven their congregations into in modern times. The Church of the East has its
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own litany of problems too. In line with the discussions above, conveying a political station
to a clergyman also conveys political standards, responses and criticisms to positions they
take regarding national matters important to all Assyrians they must claim to represent. Many
religious actors understandably do not do this, and typically only dare speak for their own
Church denomination and its adherents. Confining the political aspect of a clergyman’s duties
to a particular Church is simply not good enough. We are trying to move as one and not leave
anyone behind—it is important the discourse and politics reflects that objective. By excluding
groups outside of their denomination, Churches transfers religious sectarianism into the
political realm, entrenching divisions within the Assyrian body politic which permeate across
the lay spheres of each respective Church. Putting aside the tea parties, photo opportunities
and scheduled visits among leadership figures, the last place Assyrians will find
manifestations of meaningful unity on the ground—by definition—is within our churches.
Swiftly moving past the farcical and lone conjuring of Tibetans as a nation led by a religious
figure (as if to suggest some kind of aspiration—some kind of model to follow), one
convenient example omitted by Mar Awa Royel was Iran, a nation run by religious mullahs
who rebrand policies as fatwas and demand every aspect of Iranian society conform to their
edicts. We all know deep down this line of argument is not sensible: “successful” nations—
used loosely, but meaning a group of people who in some noticeable way transform struggle
into prosperity and whose citizens aren’t periodically in open revolt against the authorities—
are governed by inclusive political movements or parties.
The Syrian and Chaldean Churches have grown more isolated and anti-Assyrian in their
identity, rhetoric and actions since the Ottoman genocide, but this is not the case with the
Church of the East—at least from a lofty vantage point. Thus, it is imperative that a more
thorough examination of the Church of the East’s leadership is conducted in the post empire
era. Among Assyrians, this is the Church which has openly sought to take up the mantle and
responsibilities of a national Church and the institutional representative of the Assyrian
people, increasingly depicted as synonymous with members of the Assyrian Church of the
East. Like the Syrian and Chaldean Churches, the majority of its adherents believe it to be
‘true’ and ‘original’ in ecclesiastical and doctrinal terms, and a legitimate institution in terms
of guiding its adherents morally and socially. But unlike those churches, the Assyrian Church
of the East has successfully put itself forward (and has been embraced by its followers) as the
most legitimate and effective body of national organisation within the Assyrian nation.
The Church of the East occupies a prominent position in the affairs and imagination of
Assyrian nationalists—many of whom are associated with the Assyrian diaspora of today.
Certain demographics need to be charted to realise why. Firstly, the Church of the East
currently has little influence in the affairs of Iraq, having relocated the seat of the Patriarchate
from Tehran to Chicago, IL in 1980 after war had broken out between Iraq and Iran, keeping
it there for 35 years until 2015. Migration out of Iraq during this period enabled a burgeoning
Assyrian diaspora population to be, think and live as Assyrians away from oppressive forces
who punished them for doing so—and all within close proximity to the Church. Many
adherents of the Church of the East blossomed into Assyrian nationalists and married the two
aspects of their identity together in the safety of the West. The two aspects grew in definition
together. It is worth noting that the experience and intermingling of heightened religiousness
and nationalism among persecuted diaspora populations is similarly mirrored in Greek and
Armenian communities.
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Secondly, the Church of the East is commonly known as the ‘Martyr’s Church’ for mostly
good reasons: the historically significant martyrdom of Patriarch Mar Shimon Benjamin and
others during the genocide inflicted on Assyrians by Ottoman Turks and Kurds left a lasting
wound in our psyche from a time where our religious and political leadership were not of a
separate nature. Observing the immense suffering endured by their kin for their political
manoeuvrings, the leadership of the Chaldean Church adopted a policy of submissiveness
from the time of Mar Emmanuel II (Patriarch from 1900 through to his death in 1947)
through to Mar Raphael II Bidawid (2003), relinquishing any political aspirations towards
autonomy over territory at the cost of greater assimilation into Arab and Kurdish Islamic
society. This kept its demographic presence in the country relatively stable. In contrast,
adherents to the Church of the East under Mar Eshai Shimon experienced profound
persecution for maintaining these political ambitions, which culminated in Mar Eshai
Shimon’s exile from the country in 1933, the year of the brutal and unrecognized Simele
Massacre against Assyrians wrought by newly independent Iraqi Army forces.
The efforts (and failures) of both our religious and political actors in petitioning sovereign
powers and the League of Nations after both World Wars as well as those of Agha Petros, an
early proponent of the separation of Church and State power (rejected by Mar Shimun
Benjamin) did nothing to improve the defeated and miserable condition of all Assyrians
today. The world informed us it didn’t care then, as it doesn’t care now.
The following section outlines how the leadership of the only remaining Church which
professes an Assyrian identity addressed the Assyrian question over the last century—a
question they have designated themselves as the primary guardian of. As mentioned
previously with the change of name, the Assyrian Church of the East has declared itself as the
“ethnic Church”; the “guarantor”; the way to “advance the process” towards liberation that
we all long for despite this litany of failures. We must now ask: how has the Church of the
East advanced us in this process since Mar Shimon Benjamin’s assassination in 1918 and the
exile and eventual murder of Mar Eshai Shimon in 1975?
THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH OF THE EAST AND NATIONAL LIBERATION
The Church itself entered a period muted political activity after the Paris Peace Conference
and catastrophe at Simele. International attention was acquired briefly with the same
strategies but these efforts again failed to yield any support from foreign governments to
fulfil our demands; first at the United Nation’s San Francisco Conference in 1945 and then at
the United Nations in 1947. It is interesting that Mar Awa recalls the Dalai Lama of Tibet in
his interview, who still appeals in vain to sovereign governments for justice, when Mar Eshai
Shimon abandoned this policy altogether by declaring his loyalty to the Shah of Iran and in
1948 further decreeing all Assyrians must remain loyal to the governments in each part of
their homeland—recognizing even the authority of the Ba’ath government of Al-Bakr in
1970. This represented the Church of the East abandoning the Assyrian Question as foreign
determination after being made to realise (repeatedly) that it had been fruitless. They did this
all the way back in 1948—way ahead of its time considering many Assyrians today still
naively believe in the arrival of this long-awaited justice as the primary mover in our
liberation; that if only we ask the right people in the right way, we will achieve salvation.
Notwithstanding the tilt towards Rome in 1964 with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar
resulting in the tragic schism which birthed the Ancient Church of the East, the direction of
the Church changed after Mar Eshai Shimon’s murder by Assyrian David Malik Ismael.
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Speculation surfaced that it was a politically motivated act by rivals eager to reenergise and
politicise the Church vis-à-vis relations with Iraq. With the consecration of Mar Dinkha IV,
the ‘Assyrian Church of the East’ was born soon after and a period of increased political
activity commenced—all under the facade of continued observance and respect for sovereign
governments.
Mar Awa claimed in his interview that he “did not want to politicize” anything he was
saying, yet the many claims made regarding the leadership of nations and mechanisms
needed to advance national objectives are inherently political. The continued disparity
between political statements and acts and a self-defined rejection of their political nature is
necessary in order to maintain authority free from the criticism associated with politics, and
levelled so heavily by Assyrians towards their political leaders. It is the partaking in and a
promotion of a politics of no accountability.
In a conversation with author Christoph Baumer in 2001, Mar Dinkha stated:
“We [the Church] want neither to become a museum of religious archaeology nor to
serve politics, but rather we want to remain open to the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Two paths are open to the Church. Either it defines itself according to the ethnic
component, the Assyrian identity and its history. Then it will become the instrument of
worldly objectives. Or it perceives its task as religious. Then its purpose consists in
spreading the Good News, whether in Syriac, English or any other language.
Although the old Syriac language is an important factor in our solidarity, it is only an
instrument, not the religion itself. We want to avoid the fate that our religion suffered
in China. Then it refused to integrate itself into Chinese culture, insisting on the use
of the Syriac language.”
Do the views of Mar Awa and Mar Dinkha align? They do not seem to. Examining actions
however take us further into the mire.
For Mar Dinkha, maintaining the Mar Eshai Shimun policy of rapprochement and
compliance with governments certainly continued to be on the agenda (noticeably
sidestepping political affairs in Iraq during the Ba’ath years), however, clandestine attitudes
were beginning to ferment among a section of Assyrians who viewed the invasion of Iraq in
2003 as an opportunity to reassert some level of political agency. Note: see Andy Darmoo—
Praidoon Darmoo’s brother, then second in command of the Assyrian Universal Alliance
(AUA)—and his alleged business dealings with the Saddam regime during the 1990’s
through to the lobbying of the UK government in 2002 to invade Iraq. These moves were
made by people close to the Church: Andy Darmoo was chairperson to the Assyrian Church
of the East committee in the UK and Praidoon Darmoo often accompanied Mar Dinkha on
official visits, most notably to meet Pope John Paul II and Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud
Barzani in October 2005.
This meeting between Barzani and Mar Dinkha was not missing preceding overtures: earlier
on, Mar Dinkha reportedly penned a warm letter in 2005 to Barzani congratulating him on his
election as President. This letter was a precursor to formal relationship-building between the
KDP and the Assyrian Church of the East. The usual policy of accommodating and
submitting to sovereign governments was being extended to a regional authority and former
partner during the revolt against Saddam’s regime. The meeting which took place in
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Washington D.C. later in the year was concluded after Barzani refused to meet with or
engage any other Assyrian figure other than Mar Dinkha and several closely attached AUA
representatives. Barzani reportedly agreed to grant the Church $30m, along with offices and
other complexes, in an effort to attract the Patriarchate to relocate from Chicago to Arbil.
Following this very selective diplomacy on the part of Barzani and the receptiveness of Mar
Dinkha and associated AUA figures, Barzani and the KDP explicitly declared in 2006 that
the Nineveh Plain and other Assyrian land was part of Kurdistan, rejecting any administrative
autonomy there unless it was under Kurdish authority. The same actors were responsible for
rebuffing the plan submitted to Rep. Anna Eshoo in 2008 to designate the Nineveh Plain as
an administrative province tied to the Federal Government. This rendered the Nineveh Plain
contested territory in a meaningful sense and ushered in a decade of destabilization by the
KDP which culminated in the emergence and success of ISIS as a genocidal, territorial actor.
2006 was also the year the Wikileaks scandal broke, where government intelligence records
were leaked in their thousands to the public. The scope of these leaks was so large that they
included the politicking of Assyrian actors in the New Iraq. Contrary to the 2001 rhetoric of
“not serving politics” we see that Mar Dinkha actively steered the Church into political
terrain with his enthusiastic and emphatic endorsement of Sargis Aghajan (Sarkesi) to the US
authorities, a high ranking Assyrian finance minister belonging to the KDP. He made a point
of doing this at the expense of any other Assyrian political actor in Iraq including the
democratically elected Yonadam Kanna and the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM),
whom he described as a “vanity party” who did not speak for Assyrians.
His praise of the KRG comes after the brutal, unpunished murders of Francis Shabo MP in
1992 and several other Assyrian dissidents who participated in the KRG democratic
experiment—one which ultimately failed and never began in the first place, with the Kurds
continuing to embrace the feudal and tribal patronage structures they are familiar with, except
now with billions of dollars and full armouries. Mar Dinkha’s delegation of political opinion
to Sargis Aghajan was itself a political opinion. Complementing endless propaganda at the
time of newly and poorly built housing for Assyrians promulgated by KDP-funded Ishtar TV,
came the celebration of Aghajan as a mysterious and noble hero among Assyrians. This all
inspired confidence in the policies of the KDP in an age where information was far less
scrutinized and did not appear in real-time as it does today.
Aghajan organised a conference in Ankawa financed by the KDP in 2007 with the purpose of
bringing together all Assyrian religious and political leaders and animating them towards a
KDP agenda. This conference was responsible for birthing the virulent and prevailing tri-
name, “Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac” more formally in Iraqi politics, thereby reducing
‘Assyrian’ to a mere denominational component of a hyphenated mess—a prototype of
reductive unity. No doubt, this bonded Assyrians together (and acted as a political
counterweight to the ADM’s controversial 2003 relic “ChaldoAssyrian”), but the plane in
which this bond was formed was sectarian by definition—with the KDP designing the lock. It
legitimised a century of failed isolationist, self-sustaining and submissive policy by our
Churches and guaranteed the integrity of the odious triumvirate that they had established. It is
a neo-millet system with Barzani as Sultan.
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Massoud Barzani posing with Church leaders in Arbil, April 2017.
Interestingly as a side note, it was exactly ten years later in 2017 where a similar conference
was organised in Brussels by the KDP enthusiasts of the day, and with the same intentions: to
demonstrate a desire among Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac clergy and ventriloquized political
parties for the so far elusive annexation of the Nineveh Plain to the Kurdistan Region. This is
still on the agenda—the KDP didn’t suddenly give up. The conference was boycotted most
notably by the ADM, who rejected the policies promoted by the organisers, as well as the
Chaldean Church, who under Sako is now so extremely anti-Assyrian that they even reject
the tri-name—declaring also that they wanted no part in this effort to undermine the unity of
Iraq, despite supporting KDP policy in all material aspects on the ground.
The arguments which ensued in 2007 and throughout the 00’s more generally were ferocious:
Assyrians who were persuaded by this positive rhetoric and endorsement would defend the
honour of Aghajan to the end given the glowing reviews bestowed on him by all sections of
the Church leadership. Despite everybody knowing very little about him or his background,
he was somehow finding millions of dollars to spend and do the work our own politicians
seemed incapable of doing, thereby creating the illusion of success which magnified the
failures of non-KDP agents operating in incredibly difficult circumstances. But where was
this humble man finding these millions? This question even baffled US officials; from an
important Newsmax piece from May 2008:
“We have no official biography of Mr Aghajan as far as I know,” a senior U.S.

official in the Kurdish capital, Erbil, told Newsmax. “How did he make his money – if
indeed, he is personally wealthy? I haven’t a clue.”
Mar Dinkha was directing American officials towards a man who, by their own accounts, was
engaged in a “very conscious attempt at myth-building”. Even Kurdish Muslim Brotherhood
affiliate and Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Islamic Union Salaheddine Bahaaeddin was
well aware of Aghajan’s emerging role as the KDP-selected agha for Christians in Kurdistan:
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“Sarkis is being used against the Assyrian nationalist movement, which is seeking to
get the Nineveh Plain region recognized as a self-governing province of Iraq,
reporting directly to Baghdad.
His role is to decorate the Kurdish Regional Government, to counter accusations of

persecution against Christians by the KDP. He should be called the Minister of
window-dressing.”
Mayor of Bartela at the time, Jamal Dinha, said that they had asked Aghajan to “build
schools, not churches.” After buying more land for a cemetery, he claimed Aghajan “pays
more attention to the dead than to the living.” Chaldean clergy in Ankawa were also aware of
the strategy to assuage fears and accusations of KDP-orchestrated abuses. The KDP did this
by overzealously embracing Christianity and Christian symbolism with one eye on their
Western audiences, whilst positioning Assyrians loyal to them and their policies as apologist
mouthpieces representative of our political will. “They are using us for propaganda for
themselves,” claimed Father Sabri al Maqdessy in reference to the huge cross the KDP had
installed at Arbil International airport. Continuing, he said:
“That is the first thing Westerners see at the airport. It’s a symbol for them. A lot of
the [Kurdish government] politicians were educated in the West. They know the
strength of that message, to see a cross in a Muslim country. They think it will send a
message that they treat the Christians better.
“They do treat us better – while they take everything we have […] in another ten
years, we will have nothing. Christians will not own a centimetre of property. They
will take it all.”
These observations and predictions are from 2008. Ten years later, Assyrians—having once
again withstood another genocide—find themselves in an existential fight to retain whatever
land they have left in the Nineveh Plain, much of which is currently a bed of rubble, patrolled
in parts as it is by Kurdish and Arab militias where once thousands of homes stood. Aghajan
was responsible for enhancing the power of our Churches by utilising the millions in US aid
gifted directly to his ministry as well as KDP money to prioritise the building of Churches
over schools and cultural centres—the first pursuit did not obstruct the Kurdification policies
of the KDP, whereas the latter most certainly would have. US officials attested to lack of a
transparent budget—a reliable entry in the playbook of KRG governance:
A U.S. official in Erbil acknowledged that the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) has spent approximately $31 million in the Nineveh Plain, but
complained that the Kurdish regional government “lacked a transparent budget
process” and had provided little or no accounting for how its funds were spent.
Aid workers on the ground suggest that vulnerable Assyrians in Nineveh only saw 10% of
this allocated money, with the rest being swallowed up in corruption. Despite this, the
Churches leant Aghajan all of their support, and thus the actors empowered and aided each
other in very real terms—all at the expense of the Assyrian people.
The significance of these letters, private meetings, conferences, promises, actions and
relationships all firmly indicate heightened political activity within the Assyrian Church of
the East as it emerged out of its post-war stupor. What was once conspiracy and hearsay at
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the time has now crystalized into a depressing reality. Mar Dinkha definitively recommended
US officials liaise with Aghajan, a man known to be working to further KDP policies which
included the annexation of the Nineveh Plain into the Kurdistan Region. Aghajan later even
confiding privately that he merely “signed the papers put in front of him”. With the
revelations in Wikileaks, Aghajan seemingly vanished. The KDP, who undoubtedly were
angry at some of his correspondences, took decisive action by removing him from public life,
in the same way disappointing Patriarchs were dismissed during the Ottoman era.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can observe that these activities, along with the relationship
with Aghajan, were being conducted to benefit the Assyrian Church of the East as an
institution in the short-term and to the detriment of the Assyrian people as a whole in the
long-term. Given the definitions offered by the Church however, they would argue that any
benefit to the Church would be felt among its constituents—the two being inseparable, now,
in this modern sense. However, again with hindsight and visions of the charred and broken
remains of the Nineveh Plain, it is absurd to suggest the two are synonymous. A very narrow
range of interests were being prioritised in these dealings with the KDP, and all point more
concretely to a network of aligned interests between senior individuals within the Assyrian
Church of the East, the AUA and other opportunistic fringe groups.
Church leaders attend a mourning service for Dilovan Barzani, Nechirvan Barzani’s brother, April 2018.
It is also important to register that this activity was not limited to Mar Dinkha, and that
similar attitudes and activities were fostered among other high-ranking, influential leaders
within the Church. Mar Meelis, the Metropolitan of Australia and Lebanon, openly declared
that any individual or organisation who dared criticize the Church on any of its positions
should be boycotted. This decree extended to political parties, civic and community
organisations and other groups who challenged the Church’s authority. Even singers. Many
will undoubtedly cite the good works he has sponsored among the Assyrian community in
Australia, notably St Narsai College, but he has simultaneously assured his own personal
power and legacy through land rights, contracts and several unscrupulous lawsuits—entering
into a bitter conflict with both his own parishioners and the Ancient Church of the East over
reputation, land and wealth.
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Further afield in the Assyrian homeland: after a decade of subjugation, deprivation and
destabilisation in the Nineveh Plain, Peshmerga loyal to the KDP disarmed Assyrians prior to
their own sudden retreat as ISIS moved into Nineveh in June 2014. Kurdish authorities went
as far as issuing notices which promised severe punishment to Nineveh Plain residents who
did not voluntarily give up their means of self-defence. Genocide commenced, with the
famous words of an anonymous KRG official immortalised in that month: “everyone is
worried, but this is a big chance for us […] ISIL gave us in two weeks what Maliki has not
given us in eight years.” Later in September that year, Mar Meelis met with Nechirvan
Barzani. An excerpt from the official page of the Kurdistan Regional Government claimed:
"The Archbishop also reiterated his community’s gratitude and appreciation for the
role of the Peshmerga forces and their sacrifices, adding that everyone is proud of
them and that their actions will not be forgotten."
Mar Meelis meeting with Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil, September 2014.
If this positive review of Peshmerga forces who facilitated the latest genocide of Assyrians
was not enough, Mar Meelis also engages with Chaldean League separatists who are under
the tutelage of Sako from January 2017 onwards. These are a band of individuals who
positively deny their national identity and are running in the Iraqi elections on a separate,
entirely Chaldeanist list, sundering even the sectarian alliance forged by Aghajan.
Association with them seems baffling at first, but the reasons become evidently clear with
some reflection: there is very little concern about who actually wins in the Iraqi political
arena from an Assyrian perspective anymore—it matters little since the positions of each
Church have transcended Assyrian politics. In our homeland, their measure of influence is
solely determined and enabled by the patronage offered by the KDP, not the layperson whose
devotion has been trialled and assured whatever their severity.
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Mar Meelis meeting with Chaldean League affiliates, January 2017.
Looking past the strange investment ventures in the early 2000’s; the lawsuits; the setting up
of ACERO—an aid organisation controlled by the Church, remedying the problem of Church
members donating to the already established Assyrian Aid Society, an organisation that isn’t
controlled by his Church—the squabbling between youth groups tied to the Church and those
that are not and the ultimate disbanding of organisations that are not (faced with the daunting
proposition that “they would be going against the Assyrian Church”); the purchasing of
property and changing of organisational bylaws in its favour and ultimately hollowing out of
independent Assyrian organisations through a network of personal relationships; the Assyrian
Church of the East under Mar Meelis has grown into a small kingdom where one particular
Church is central to the Assyrian identity at the expense of all else.
CONCLUDING POINTS
Whilst taking different routes towards their destination, the evolving policies adopted by each
Church during the 20th C and early 21st C all terminate with capitulation to the authorities of
Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and finally various iterations of Kurdistan. The latter features far
more prominently in reference to the Assyrian Question given our only remaining
demographic concentration which has survived genocide and erasure lies in the north of
Iraq—our most ancestral homeland, and the most tangible imagining of Kurdistan. This
capitulation by the Churches occurred (at whatever national cost) since the entrenchment of
their own power and authority was assured by the KDP locally and also in the space Western
states had afforded them in diaspora. The analysis of transcendence offered earlier is
informed by the dual allocations of power from both consistently oppressive authorities such
as the KDP as well as cocooned Western “safe spaces” with which their congregations are
continuously replenished by Assyrians leaving their homelands. If “the Church is our
country” in this neo-millet system, why even bother entertaining the notion of an actual
homeland at all?
Assyrians must similarly transcend the mundane and political huckstering partaken in
discreetly at our expense. Is this existing formula of leadership the one we desire? Have these
institutions demonstrated that they are capable of handling the most crucial matters we
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delegate to them? Do the millions of dollars hoarded in diaspora bank accounts whilst
Assyrians live in a state of destitution, paying rents to the same land-owning Churches in the
Nineveh Plain and elsewhere rest easy on our consciences? It’s difficult to fathom how any
kind of liberation can be executed under these conditions which normalize centres of power
away from our own homelands, and ingrain them within us vertically through homogenous
but limited religious institutions. The experiences of our neighbours also reflects these
uncomfortable political realities. And reality is uncomfortable.
In context: with this compliance also came the abandonment of any form of national
liberation. Whichever way you address these incidents across our Church institutions, they
are harmful to us as Assyrians since they either revise history to our collective detriment,
endorse systemic oppression by foreign groups or dignify an opportunistic strain of
separatism ultimately encouraged and funded by nefarious sponsorship sources. These are
ways we should define failure and don’t because of our conditioning under Ottomanism, but
how do our Churches define success? For them, as seen here in an interview with Mar
Meelis, there is cause to celebrate an ethnic Chinese boy learning Syriac Aramaic in a school
in Sydney operationally under the Assyrian Church of the East’s control. This small remark
captures how success is defined from a Church perspective: learn the language the Church
uses and believe in its doctrine. This has nothing to do with Assyrian national liberation and
everything to do with expanding the influence of the Church regardless of ethnic background.
So we can see here, even by these few examples, that the fragility of these Churches in
respect to Assyrian liberation very much corresponds to both their nature as Churches (and
what Churches are preoccupied with doing) and to the conservative political spheres with
which they attempt to operate. Focusing on the politics: when religious leaders seek to cross
over into the political realm, it must be assumed that criticism comes with the territory.
However in the case of our Churches, the loyalty commanded is so strong that any amount of
political activity on their part has no effect on either their image or their ability to continue
their policies.
Mar Awa Royel’s claim that Assyrians desire statehood and that it’s a long process, and that
the Church “guarantees” and “advances” this process, is one that must be thoroughly
inspected. Putting aside the Chaldean and Syrian Churches, which as institutions purposefully
distance themselves from the Assyrian identity as a matter of principle, what evidence is
there that the Assyrian Church of the East has advanced this cause? The experiences of other
nations outlined here illustrate that their religious authorities repeatedly proved to be an
obstacle to their liberation and not a vehicle. This matches up with our own Churches
devolving into institutions of appeasement and sometimes even outright collaboration. The
Armenian Church had the benefit of being incubated in the Armenian Soviet Socialist
Republic with powerful political parties for a time. Only after the victories scored by the
Armenian nationalist movement, often in spite of the positions held by their own religious
authorities, did the Church began offering its support more consistently to this centre of
power. This support has since ebbed and flowed in accordance with ensuing power dynamics
between Armenia and its neighbours.
And so I repeat—where is the evidence for Mar Awa Royel’s claim here or elsewhere in
history? All evidence suggests the opposite: Churches, as naturally conservative institutions,
are far more predisposed to existing power structures and not national liberation movements
which aim to reformulate them.
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BUILDING OUR OWN POWER
Before we build power, we have to understand power. We need to do this so that we can
understand what has been surrendered and how it can be recovered.
Power has been consistently centred away from us as a people, and our conservative religious
institutions naturally gravitate towards it to ensure their survival and authority. Continuing
the old millet system paradigm installed over the five-hundred years of Ottoman rule is
something our Churches are expressly keen to do, even well past the birth of nation states and
secular politics in the 20th C. This old paradigm, where power is allocated to the religious
figureheads of non-Muslim groups, is the lifeblood of all of our Churches and the Churches
of neighbouring peoples in the Middle East. Survival comes with a price, and the price is paid
differently in the form of concessions made to dominant Muslim cultures and empires. The
Copts in Egypt surrendered their language; the Maronites romanised their liturgy.
Assyrians—through their different Churches—all defined their contracts of submission
independently.
Since its split from the Church of the East in 1552, the anachronistically named Chaldeans
had a powerful lever in Rome during its early centuries—offering as it did, material aid and
political protection to those ‘Nestorian’ heretics who converted into the Catholic faith. These
newly converted Catholics were forbidden to associate or mix with their Church of the East
kin. Rome contributed to the general passivity of Chaldean leadership, who knew that all they
had to do was obey their superiors and a political extension of Christian solidarity would
sustain them in the harsh terrain of their homelands. However, with the alliance of Christian
Germany and the Muslim Ottomans during the First World War and the subsequent genocide
enabling and cover-ups, it was clear that this solidarity had been ruptured and a precedence
was set (see: modern US policies in Iraq and Syria). All of our Churches once relied on this
solidarity—and many Assyrian activists ignorant of history bizarrely continue to do so.
The underlying motivation driving our Churches has always been the survival and
preservation of themselves as institutions first and foremost. Adaption to shifting power
structures was and remains the best strategy to conserve their own religious authority. None
of them had an especially intimate link with the Assyrian ethnic identity—unlike Armenian,
Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches—and all presided over a nation whose fundamental
unity was attested to in numerous key material and historical facts existing outside of their
jurisdiction. These facts include the usage of Assyrian and self-identification as Assyrians
within that language and irrespective of church identification: cultural markers that
distinguished the Assyrian ethnic group from its neighbours, both Christian and Muslim.
Our identity is older than all of our Churches, and thus, they cannot claim to contain the
entire truth of our people, much less create our identity as Mar Awa claims—a fiction which
manifests as separatism in Chaldean and Syrian Churches. This claim is one of historical
significance and future precedent all at once—it is a claim to power, rather than an organic
embodiment of it. Assyrians must confront this claim and reflect on whether they truly accept
it or not, for if they do, they utterly surrender the Assyrian identity to the consistently self-
interested machinations of the Churches and their volatile behaviours outlined in preceding
sections. For Assyrians to liberate themselves, they must first liberate and focus their minds.
Only by doing this and unlearning intergenerational behaviours which compel uncritical
respect and value-making by rote can we create a space from which an inclusive movement
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of cross-denominational Free Assyrians can emerge and co-operate together. It is critical to

understand that neither belief in Christianity nor being a member of any of these Churches is
the problem; it is the paralysis which ensues by delegating to them all of the responsibilities
of worldly leadership and liberation which we should aspire to grasp hold of ourselves. True
power is unburdened—we need to unburden ourselves of religiously defined solipsism, guilt,
and sectarianism in order to build sustainable inter-communal power bases our Churches
would be forced to conform to.
Each of the Churches and their adherents, once understanding neighbours, find themselves
largely administering followers free from any immediate threats in Western urban centres. In
this environment, any pretence of genuine solidarity and co-operation is unnecessary. For
example, when Sako proposed that all of our Churches should unite (and enter full
communion with Rome) it was rejected, giving him the impetus to strengthen his own
authority among his flock. Each Church operates with similar principles in this zero-sum
game: the Churches are strengthened precisely because of their distance from each other as
distinct groups, whereas the Assyrian people are strengthened by their proximity. All trends
among the leadership of each Church indicate that this distancing will continue and amplify
in the future. Where each community identifies a strengthening within their own
denominational community, Assyrians experience a collective weakening. How much more
can Assyrians disassociate from each other until future generations are irretrievably lost? We
need to move past celebrating these communal silos in diaspora in order to realise our full
potential.
The extraordinary attachment to each Church persists. For many people, it is a positive force
in their lives. Some of the most energetic and articulate Assyrians are active members of their
Church. Many of them are already doers through their youth groups, cultural and language
classes. Many of the clergy encourage this too. All of this demonstrates the very important
capacity to work, in contrast to apathetic Assyrians not engaged or involved any Assyrian-led
organisation or activity. It is much easier to accomplish things with people who are used to
working and sacrifice than it is to activate those who are not. The task which remains elusive
is the crossing of wires—each Church incubates and nourishes its own youth, self-contained
and directed towards its own purpose, doctrine and idiosyncrasies. We need to abandon
achieving unity on a stratospheric Church leadership level and instead work towards a
meaningful convergence among the Assyrian people built on love and understanding of what
is at stake. This is the horizontal power we need to build.
Systems of patronage can be partaken in by anyone. Chest-thumping “Assyrian only”

nationalists as seen with the AUA at their formation in 1968 devolved into full submission to
the Kurdistani project. Our identity is not immune to being co-opted and instrumentalised
towards anti-Assyrian purposes, as evidenced with their actions. The proliferation of traitors,
each with their own motivations ranging from basic self-hatred to status and wealth, is not
unusual either. Just like any other marketplace where one can buy and sell, if competition is
introduced, deliverables are strengthened in quality and the very best traitors will emerge. It
is crucial to be open and honest about these things amongst ourselves, because we only learn
by asking questions and consulting history.
Power is achieved in part through the ability to think about and question anything and
everything, and be confronted by pain and betrayal in the process. Before we build houses
like Aghajan, we must assure ourselves that the foundations they rest on are sturdy and able
to withstand even the most tremendous blows. Aghajan’s houses were not built for these
22 | P a g e
purposes, and many are now are crumbling or occupied by Kurds. This is the fate which
awaits us if we do not conduct a meaningful dialogue with each other and enact original
political solutions which generations before us have repeatedly failed to do.
Mar Awa claims that persecution was the determining factor for changing the name of the
Church. I will assert that it has nothing to do with persecution per se, but the acquisition of
power within a space which presented its own opportunities. The Church has been persecuted
periodically since its inception given that it never once was institutionalised within an
imperial power, like Catholicism or Islam. It has always been a second, or perhaps even third
or fourth religion in shifting polities. This precariousness and lack of state automation was
countered by spreading the Church far and wide, but never really growing roots anywhere.
This explains its staggered and momentous collapse with each turnover in political power. In
the 1970’s, the Church tormented by endless failure saw an opportunity to seize the Assyrian
name and did so without any resistance. The Chaldean and Syrian Churches were
indifferent—one cannot surrender anything if one has already abandoned it. This act was not
inspired by persecution, but served as a prelude to another round of political activity by the
Church of the East: all of which emerged in the decades to follow.
The issue is, dominant oppressive forces reliably offer status, wealth and security to an even
greater degree to out-group collaborators than in-group volunteers. When power becomes
concentrated in an Assyrian political movement with material and territorial success, it will
elicit a pivot towards it by all subsidiary institutions, much like the Armenian experience in
their Republic.
The Assyrians of the Nineveh Plain were kept dependent on security and sustenance by the
KDP from 2003 to 2014 in the New Iraq. The corresponding Churches reacted to ISIS by
offering shelter and provisions for fleeing IDPs, betrayed by forces their own leadership
endorse. However, this care is not infinite, and many Assyrians left Iraq altogether having
had what little they had taken from them. The few who have returned to their ruined towns
and villages end up slowly rebuilding, often depending on the Church for even the basics:
sundries, fuel, heating, and permits. The Churches also double as landowners, leasing
properties to returning Assyrians. These are all arrangements enshrined and safeguarded by a
legacy of submissive behaviour on the part of the Churches towards Kurdish authorities and
the corresponding allocation of power as reward—a reimagining of the millet system.
CAN ASSYRIANS BUILD AN INCLUSIVE MOVEMENT?
Assyrians are always forced to make a choice, on an individual or organisation level, of who
to lend their support to. Do I support the ADM? Do I support my Church? How about the
other political parties? What does this support mean in terms of action on our part? These are
often the first questions which arise when engaging with our political issues and they only
serve to submerge the thrust of enquiry in a stifling and cynical discourse based on the
identity of groups and the personalities within them. It is better that we first carefully reflect
on what we would like more, what is common to us, and most importantly, what ideas,
policies and positions we support before identifying groups to support.
Inclusive movements are built not only on identities but ideas. What do you believe in?
Challenge the aspiring gatekeepers among us who petition us for support and loyalty in
exchange for their advancing of national objectives—make them present a position that is
historically grounded, coherent and reasserts Assyrian agency. Making the conversation one
23 | P a g e
about ideas and policies is exactly how we replenish our derelict armouries. Assyrians from
all denominations are consistently torn apart by sectarian agendas, but always come together
when the well-being of each other and their families is confidently put first.
Building an inclusive movement will mean confronting the elephant(s) in the room.
Discussions which aim to explicitly marginalise the Churches also foolishly marginalise their
adherents—a huge segment of the Assyrian population. This will also not advance our
national interests. The bitter pill that must be swallowed is offered with love. We must
engage our people sincerely and openly, with equal measures of respect and expectation
conveying the following message: embracing the positive things nurtured within the spaces
our Churches provide is vital, but understanding their limitations and the need to transcend
them in order to survive and flourish as a nation is equally vital.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Through the centuries, the Church of the East’s “spiritual empire” shrank from seven to eight
million adherents to as little as 400,000 (for perspective, peaking at 2-3% of the entire world
population during the Middle Ages). The other Churches have had a similar experience. We
have yet to emerge from the wreckage of the 20th C and have persisted by swinging from the
lowest branches available to us since. Oppressive forces have garnered almost unbreakable
support from key actors within our community, and this support will remain in place
indefinitely—part of the solution is at least acknowledging it. The tests which await us are set
by ourselves as well as outside groups. In order to pass them, New Assyrians need new ideas
for a new world.
Malfono Ninos Aho once remarked from an interview in 2012:
“How can you make five Patriarchs sitting in one room agree on our issues today?
That is if you can bring them under one roof! If they can do that, I believe they can
bring unity in seven months instead of the seventy years that we have been trying to
no avail. The one million dollar question is why they do not want to do it?
If we wait on reconciliation between our churches, we will wait into our graves — that is why
it is imperative that we must work within them and alongside them but also despite them. We
must, in the words of the late Malfono, “start with trying to know ourselves better, and see
what is there that we can do to help ourselves.” Any dependency on them and any other
group must be severed if it is uncritical and overlooks accountability. Things are only fixed
when people are accountable for their words and actions. If they are not, our national story is
a miserable broken record of submission and begging.
We need imagination in order to move forward and heal the trauma and intellectual damage
we have been subjected to for centuries. It is not good enough to grow up in diaspora in the
perfect mould of any one Church’s ideological and communal curriculum, since this
curriculum will not contain or accommodate the full extent of our national identity, much less
equip Assyrians with the tools needed to renovate the house of our nation. It is not good
enough to be a successful Assyrian in diaspora who “understands their language, their job,
and their faith” in order to “raise the profile of Assyrians” (Mar Meelis, 2017) since this
excludes Assyrians who are of not the correct faith (or none)—a demographic that will
always grow in the modern world.
24 | P a g e
And anyway—raise our profile to what end? What is the task before a respected Assyrian
lawyer, political scientist or academic? Would it not be document this history; to demand
accountability; to discuss these kinds of ideas—the very ideas that harm the agendas of those
who are encouraging us to excel? But no, it is only to excel under conditions they set—ones
that take us further away from each other instead of bringing us closer together.
It is the nature of those who are self-interested to eventually consume themselves. An

intellectual rejuvenation, or liberation, would shield us and future generations from this tragic
feast. The New Assyrian must be the Free Assyrian, not only as free as possible from
oppressive outside forces, but free from engendered bigotry and malice. There is no-get-rich-
quick national liberation strategy, it is the hardest thing we can undertake in a world dictated
by foreign powers and governments, but we have to begin by talking and learning from each
other.
Liberating the Assyrian mind must be the preoccupation of every aspiring Free Assyrian; this
inspires us into a condition where we rediscover agency, abandon victimhood and
submissiveness, and ultimately begin the long march towards freedom.
25 | P a g e

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April 2018

Church and Nation

THE MAR AWA ROYEL INTERVIEW

EASTERN CHURCHES, EASTERN NATIONS

Growing protests by Armenians in the eastern provinces demanding protection from

Patriarch Mateos Izmirlian (1894–1896) sought to reinvigorate the patriarchate after

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO US?

Beyond failing to confine religious identify to a religious nomenclature; the imbuing a

THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH OF THE EAST AND NATIONAL LIBERATION

In a conversation with author Christoph Baumer in 2001, Mar Dinkha stated:

Massoud Barzani posing with Church leaders in Arbil, April 2017.

“We have no official biography of Mr Aghajan as far as I know,” a senior U.S.

His role is to decorate the Kurdish Regional Government, to counter accusations of

Mar Meelis meeting with Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil, September 2014.

Mar Meelis meeting with Chaldean League affiliates, January 2017.

BUILDING OUR OWN POWER

of cross-denominational Free Assyrians can emerge and co-operate together. It is critical to

Systems of patronage can be partaken in by anyone. Chest-thumping “Assyrian only”

CAN ASSYRIANS BUILD AN INCLUSIVE MOVEMENT?

Malfono Ninos Aho once remarked from an interview in 2012:

It is the nature of those who are self-interested to eventually consume themselves. An

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