Review Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space

Benjamen, Alda, Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Delhi, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2022

 

Iraq is one of the most diverse countries in the Middle East and yet there are very few books about the different groups outside of the Kurds that make up the population. That means that Alda Benjamen’s Assyrians in Modern Iraq, Negotiating Political and Cultural Space is a welcomed addition to the canon. She focuses upon the struggle by Assyrians to achieve their rights within the country from the Ottoman period up to modern Iraq with most of the book focusing upon the 1950s-80s.

 

Benjamen begins with how Assyrians were labeled as foreigners by the early Iraqi government to facilitate their oppression. There were already Assyrians in Iraq when the state was founded by the British in 1920 but a new wave of immigrants arrived in 1922 as the Turkish government attacked the community and banished its religious leaders. This led to Assyrians being labeled as foreigners which was raised again in 1933 as the Iraqi military carried out the Simele massacre where over 100 villages were destroyed and looted and some 6000 killed in northern Iraq. The book explains how Baghdad claimed the Assyrians were not real Iraqis and a threat to the new nation to justify their murder. This became a seminal event which Assyrians tried to keep alive as part of their history while subsequent governments would try to erase or downplay it.

 

That leads to the author’s next point which was how the urbanization of Assyrians allowed them to join national politics and challenge the status quo. In the cities many Assyrians were drawn to the Iraqi Communist Party that talked about an equal society for all. Members took part in the 1946 oil workers’ strike in Kirkuk, the Wathba protests against the Anglo-Iraq Treaty in 1948, the Iraqi Women’s League, the 1959 fighting in Mosul between Arabs and Kurds, and ended up joining Mulla Mustafa Barzani’s revolt against Baghdad. Many Assyrians would become part of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The first female peshmerga commander for instance, was an Assyrian woman Margaret George. Barzani wanted to control the Assyrians however as part of his vision of a Kurdish region which eventually led to the formation of independent Assyrian parties. Following the book’s thesis these actions allowed Assyrians to demand workers’ rights, oppose British imperialism, and fight a series of autocratic governments. Most importantly the suppression of the Communists and Barzani’s attempt to submerge the Assyrians within the Kurdish struggle led the community to form its own organizations.

 

Assyrians in Modern Iraq brings up how Assyrian women in the Communist Party and peshmerga were also able to challenge their gender roles. During the trial of a member of the Iraqi Women’s League for example she was accused of going to a man’s house that was not a relative which led to rumors of an affair and talking to Muslim women in their homes when no men were present to recruit them to the League. These were largely unheard of during that time and showed how political activism led to changes in behavior and norms.

 

This all makes Assyrians in Modern Iraq a must read to learn about the Assyrian community under the Iraqi state. It provides a good mix of history and individual stories and doesn’t get caught up in academic theories or writing. It also focuses upon the modern times instead of the ancient period as most scholarship on Assyrians has done.

 

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