The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Scourge Of Nationalism

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Friday, April 13 2007, 18:20:57 (CEST)
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There is much in Dr Joseph’s book besides the “shocking” revelations in the first chapter of how we Nestorians came to think of ourselves as the lineal descendants of the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians. For one thing he clears up the false ideas perpetuated by the nationalists that the Kurds are the eternal and blood-mad enemies of the Nestorians. For centuries Kurds and Nestorians lived in relative peace and harmony…especially when you consider the murderous relations between Christian and Christian in Europe, Civil War in America where brother killed brother over the right to enslave fellow human beans etc.

Dr Joseph shows how the Patriarch and his family withheld support from the Kurd chiefs who fought the centralizing efforts of the Ottoman government and may even have betrayed the plans in order to win favor with the Turks and, by extension win the protection of the French representatives in Istanbul who’d pledged to protect the Catholic Chaldeans.

One has to feel great sympathy for the Nestorians, caught between mutually hostile Muslim powers and often forced to choose sides between warring Kurdish factions. Their desperation shows in the way they attached themselves to foreign Christians, leading those missionaries to conclude that the Nestorians were eager to correct the “error of their ways”, when what they really wanted was financial aid and physical protection…even to the point of eventually offering to renounce their centuries-old Nestorianism to join with the Greek Orthodox Church in the belief that Russia would extend them the protection Britain and America withheld.

These were desperate people whose situation grew intolerable as the Powers played politics and maneuvered for position, viewing the Nestorians as natural allies…even though their far smaller numbers and weaker position made the relationship unequal in the extreme. In truth the Nestorians were never allies…just a harassed people looking for a big brother who might reward them for faithful service.

Another interesting discovery or reminder is that not all Nestorians were behind these efforts to gain special treatment that could only be given or enforced by what were soon to turn out to be the enemies of their nations…the fickle Europeans. Many were opposed but they were effectively silenced, even to the point of being murdered by their fellow kinsmen. Especially in the aftermath of the Great War, many among us said our future lay in learning as best we could how to get along with our new neighbors in our new homes…that to take up arms again at the behest of anyone, foreigner or Nestorian, was only to invite more misery and ill-feelings. And this is exactly what has occurred.

The small handful of noisy nationalists among us today are the lineal descendants, not of Shalmanessar but of the troublemakers of 1914 and 1838…except they have made sure to leave the scene…preferring to do their “nationalizing” from the safety of Chicago and Turlock and Melbourne. The nationalists of yesteryear put their own lives and fortunes on the line, in addition to risking everyone else’s. Their offspring make sure first to secure life and liberty and economic security for themselves, and then make sure to ruin it for everyone else still caught back home.

Enter ZOWAA. Kenna could hardly have come to the United States or Europe to speak the truth…he could not have said…”Give us your help as we try to exist and make peace with whatever side will win this power struggle between Iraqi and Kurd”…or Kurd and Kurd. He could not have told the simple truth because the nationalists at Starbucks would have called him a “traitor to Assyria”…as they called their mothers whenever food wasn’t ready in time. Kenna was forced to play along with the notion that there was some sort of “opportunity” waiting for Christians if other Christians pounded Iraq to pieces.

The surviving Christians who managed to make it to the north to join their brethren are now supposed to renounce any aid from Kurdistan and are expected, by the boys in Turlock and San Jose, to “insist on their rights”…which we should all know by now will lead exactly where…exile or the cemetery. But what you have to remember is that our nationalists of today are also religiously hidebound so that to them, the idea of “martyrdom”, especially of someone else, has a mighty great attraction.

We can see already how they turn on one another at the drop of a hat…it would take very little, therefore, for them to decide that the ongoing misery of the Christians left in Iraq is well deserved for their “treachery”…if not a judgment from God. The good news is that there aren’t many of them. It’s true that they make the most noise…but, thanks to the internet, we can see just how impotent they really are…with everyone of them encouraging the other guy to “do something”….when not demanding that the rest of us must “wake up, my friend”.

They have little formal education among them…have no experience in the things they discuss…the majority of them never held any position of responsibility…certainly nothing near to it in politics…they make a great fuss and take great delight in brushing away all “so-called” intellectuals or learned professionals because “we know the truth”…a truth that is the biggest lie of them all…a truth foisted onto them by Europeans and one which they can not in any way prove…for such an “obvious” proof. Not even Maggie, great educator that she is, was able to keep her wits about her when confronted with the simple facts in Dr Joseph’s book.

The only real damage these nationalists can do….since they have never done any good…is anger the Kurds…as they recently bent all their efforts to anger the Iraqi government…thereby causing it to retaliate against the Christians still living in Iraq…this is the “task” Fred Aprim has set himself to do by hurling accusations at the Kurds as he once did against Saddam…and his efforts on “behalf”, not of the Christians of Iraq, but in behalf of his own ideology, are considered “nationalistic”…when the only “nation” he’s ever damaged has been his own. The war-weary and harassed Christians of Kurdistan are supposed to court danger, for Fred’s sake, and to forego the handouts Fred gladly accepts, because these come from Kurds and not Fred’s relatives…who haven’t offered to support anyone but Fred.

Along these lines it’s useful to point out just such an attitude among the first missionaries, in this case the American Dr Asahel Grant…the one who visited the Kurds while their preparations were being made to attack the Nestorians, but who did nothing to try to ease the situation….

Because of the encouragement the foreign missionaries were giving the Nestorians and the suspicions raised that Grant was the forerunner of those who would try to take the Kurdish homeland away from the tribal chiefs, Nurallah, Amir of Hakkari, who had tried to discourage further foreign incursions as well as get the Patriarch to agree to only a spiritual role among his people, began his efforts to subjugate the Nestorians. The residence of the Patriarch was attacked and burned to the ground…the Patriarch escaping to a tribe loyal to him.

…and here we quote, “To Grant, who heard of these incidents while at Mosul, what had taken place were merely temporary disturbances which would make the Nestorians more receptive to the word of God. ‘In their affliction,’ he quoted Hosea 5:15,’ they will seek me early’”.

It is exactly more “affliction” that our nationalists are looking for…not for them…(indeed their affliction comes from considering that Iraqi Christians are willing to become Kurdish Christians, if this will get them peace)…but for those still back home….those whom Aprim is “counting on” to keep a “presence” for modern Assyrians in Iraq..while he makes one in San Jose. Perhaps, like Grant, they believe these afflictions will make the Nestorians “more receptive to the word of” Aprim, if not God.

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