WE MUST PREVAIL!

The tables have finally turned. As this week’s issue goes to press, another night of heavy bombing portents the end of the tyrannical leadership of Saddam Hussein and the beginning of a long road ahead for the Assyrian homeland. Soon the country of Iraq will enter a short episode of chaos and adjustment, followed by a long period of restoration. Assyrians in Iraq are already optimistic about the revitalization of Assyrian identity, language, political rights, and Christian faith. Their optimism must equally be fueled by our active involvement and support.

We in the west must recognize the grave magnitude of our non-performance during these complex and confusing days. Our silence and apathy may cost many lives and irreparable damage for the Assyrian communities in Iraq. A simple prescription for success is optimism, innovation, and leadership. Indeed this is how the Assyrians in North Iraq have survived two decades of isolation and neglect.

It is crucial that all community leaders enjoin their Assyrian families and individuals to participate in activities that could promote greater recognition of the Assyrians in Iraq and help raise much needed funds for the war-torn Assyrian families. This requires strong leadership on behalf of our leaders and a genuine sense of optimism by the rest of us.

Our performance in the past two weeks has been regrettable. Of the dozens of Assyrian communities around the world consisting of over 1000 families, only two – San Jose and Chicago – took to the streets and demonstrated for the recognition of the Assyrian rights in Iraq. This lack of concern among our people is inexcusable and cannot be tolerated.

Aggressive measures create drastic results. Ask yourself two simple questions: Do a minimum of 5 percent of the inhabitants in your city know about the Assyrians of Iraq? If not then you must immediately commence aggressive solutions: barrage local newspaper with letters, organize peaceful demonstrations, and contact your local political representatives. At this point, there is no AUA vs ADM, Chaldean vs Assyrian, Pro or Anti-War. All our forces must be amassed and directed toward two deliberate outcomes: clear recognition of Assyrian rights and enormous financial support for needy families.

By the time you read next week’s editorial, the capital of Iraq may be under total control of the U.S. and U.K troops. The problem we will be facing then may not be lack of food or shelter, rather our inability to guarantee equal participation in the governance of Iraq.

Nothing less than Divine Providence has brought the Assyrian nation to this stage of its historic existence. While the butcher of Baghdad and his evil men are being punished for their crimes against our people, we will continue to engage in reconstructing Iraq, our homeland, and our identity.

Wilfred Bet-Alkhas
Editor

LAMENT FOR URUK

A Sumerian Poem Written around 3000 B.C.

Heaven and earth put their divine powers to sleep.
Mortal man multiplied to become as numerous as the gods.
When together ...... had achieved a momentous decision,
the gods, Enki and Ninki, determined the consensus –
deemed worthless. Enul and Ninul assigned the fate.

When together An and Enlil had created it, that one resembled
When Ninlil had given it features, that one was fit for
When together Aruru, Suenand Enki had fashioned its limbs,
that one turned pitch black, as at night, halfway through the watch,
All the great gods paled at its immensity
It was brought about. Like a great wild bull which bellows mightily.
That one filled the world with its roar.

As its gigantic horns reached up to heaven, who trembled in his very core?
As it was piled up over the mountains like a battle-net, who turned away?
Who caused wailing and lamenting in those streets?
Uruk, like a loyal citizen in terror, set up an alarm and exclaimed:
"Rise up!" Why did its hand seize Uruk?
Why did the benevolent eye look away?
Who brought about such worry and lamenting?

That one drew nearer.
That one settled upon the ground.
Why would he withdraw?
Who distorted Uruk’s good sense and deranged its good counsel?
Who smashed its good deity?

Who desecrated the fearsome radiance which crowned it?
Who brought about mob panic in Uruk?
Along with the city, the foreign lands, who is in the temples of Uruk?

Source: Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E and Zólyomi, G. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford University, UK, 1998 - © All rights reserved to authors.

[Z-info: The ancient city of Uruk (Biblical Erech) was located about 250 kilometers south of Baghdad in southern Bet-Nahrain. Home of the great king-god Gilgamesh- Uruk, founded 5000 years ago, was re-discovered in 1912 by the German archaeologists. The name Iraq is often attributed to the name of this Sumerian city.]

ASSYRIAN DELEGATION VISITS PM TONY BLAIR

(ZNDA: London) On Wednesday 19 March, an Assyrian delegation presented a letter to Mr. Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The delegation also met with various members of the British parliament. The Assyrian delegation comprised the following (left to right

1) Samir David – Bet Nahain Democratic Party
2) Praidon Darmoo – Assyrian Universal Alliance
3) Yatron Darmoo – Assyrian National Congress
4) Albert Yelda - one of the 65-man Follow-up and Coordination Committee
5) Gewargis Bakoos – Assyrian Patriotic Union
6) Emmanuel Youkhanna – Assyrian Democratic Movement
7) John Michael – Assyrian Democratic Movement

ASSYRIAN DELEGATION’S LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR

Prime Minister Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

19th March 2003
Dear Prime Minister Blair,

As we are nearing a turning point in the history of our homeland Iraq, the below mentioned Democratic Assyrian political organisations would like to take this opportunity to highlight the plight and concerns of our people in Iraq.

Assyrian Christians are the indigenous people of Iraq, our history in that region spans 6000 years. Assyrians speak the Aramaic language, the language of our saviour Jesus Christ and indeed Assyrians were the first nation to accept Christianity in the first century A.D.

During the First World War, Assyrians allied with the British against the Ottoman Turks and as a consequence lost over half our population as well as our ancestral homelands.

There are approximately 1.5 million Assyrian Christians in Iraq today. Under the current dictatorial regime, Assyrian people have endured 35 years of systematic oppression, persecution and summary executions due to our distinct race and Christian beliefs.

The Iraqi census in 1977 forced Assyrians to register as either Arabs or Kurds, this was in line with the regimes policy of forced Arabisation of the Assyrians in an attempt to eliminate our identity.

Under Saddam’s regime, over two hundred Assyrian villages and countless ancient Assyrian Churches and Monasteries were razed to the ground, Churches and Monasteries, which had remained intact for over 1,600 years. The inhabitants of these villages were either killed or displaced. Non-Assyrians now inhabit these ancient Assyrian villages and we fear that they may have been lost forever.

Assyrians are forbidden to teach the Assyrian Aramaic language and are not permitted to christen our children with Assyrian Christian names.

Due to the barbaric policy of Saddam’s evil regime, over one million Assyrians, 25% of our total number worldwide, have fled Iraq over the last 30 years.

We, the below mentioned Assyrian political organisations support you, Mr. Prime Minister and the President of the United States of America in your joint leadership to liberate the people of Iraq, without your support and moral stance, such a task is impossible. We believe this is crucial for the safety and security of the people of Iraq, the region and the world.

We strive for:

· Human rights and equality for every Iraqi irrespective of gender, ethnicity, religion, political or personal beliefs.
· Unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
· Establishment of a democratic and constitutional Iraq that is based on the rule of law and order.
· An Iraq that is free from weapons of mass destruction and is at peace with its neighbours.
· An Iraq that is a catalyst for democracy, peace and prosperity in the region.

In order for democracy to work in Iraq, all ethnic groups irrespective of race, religion and numbers must have fair and equal representation in all official government organisations and institutions. The Assyrians worst fear is that our legitimate rights may be once again ignored and suppressed. Therefore, we urge the British and American governments to utilise their influence to ensure that democracy is built on a solid foundation by ensuring that all ethnic groups are treated and looked upon equally.

Our Assyrian people in Iraq anxiously await the day of liberation, Iraqi people everywhere will be eternally grateful to those who made freedom, peace and democracy a reality in our homeland, Iraq.

As British citizens of Assyrian descent we stand by the United Kingdom in its effort to bring about a lasting peace to the world.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the British and American troops and the innocent people of Iraq.

Yours sincerely,
For and on behalf of,

Assyrian Democratic Movement
Assyrian National Congress
Assyrian Patriotic Party
Assyrian Universal Alliance
Bet-Nahrain Democratic Party

SYRIAN ORTHODOX PATRIARCH LOSES SLEEP OVER HIS IRAQI FLOCK

Courtesy of Associated Press (18 March); article by Bruce Stanley

(ZNDA: Damascus) As leader of one of the world's oldest Christian sects, Patriarch Zakka Iwas has pursued his calling from Baghdad to New York and back again to the Iraqi capital.

He lives and works now in Damascus, seat of the Syriac Orthodox Church — a 1,500-year old institution that counts thousands of members in the United States. His prayers have focused lately on his hometown, Baghdad, and the 10,000 followers of his church living there.

Candy-red prayer beads clicked in the patriarch's fingers as he spoke of his anxiety about the dangers facing Christians in a war launched by U.S. President George W. Bush against Iraq.

"I'm sick because of it. I sleep only a little, and I'm very worried. I pray that God will have mercy on us and save our people and our country, not only Iraq but the whole area," he said in a recent interview.

Iwas, 69, insists he is no friend of Saddam Hussein. He met the Iraqi President several times while serving as archbishop of Baghdad and Basra. Iwas left Iraq when he became the church patriarch in 1980, one year after Saddam rose to power.

"I am not with the government. I am not with the regime. But I am with the people," he said.

Iwas is suspicious of Washington's motives. Like many in the Middle East, he believes the Bush administration's relentless push to disarm the Iraqi leader is driven by greed for Iraq's oil reserves — the world's second largest — and not by compassion for its people.

"Americans are trying to destroy Iraq, as they did Afghanistan, to get the petroleum and other things. That is clear," he said.

"Is this human rights? What is the business of the United States to move into this country or that country, to remove this or that head of state? Why don't they do that in Israel, to help the Palestinians?"

Iwas, whose official title is Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, draws a sharp distinction between Americans and their government. He spent two formative years studying at the Episcopal Church's General Theological Seminary in downtown Manhattan. He left in 1962 with a love for the people he met there, and a newfound passion for the music of Beethoven and Handel.

Unfortunately, he said, Americans are likely to find themselves reviled in the Middle East because of an Iraq war, particularly if they make no forceful effort to stop Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights.

Iwas spoke with a passion and bluntness that seemed at odds with the conservatism natural for a cleric steeped in ancient tradition. When he conducts services at St. George Cathedral in the oldest, walled section of Damascus, Iwas speaks in Syriac, a modern version of Aramaic — the language Jesus Christ is believed to have spoken. He discusses the medieval Crusades as if they were a recent calamity.

Iwas, a monk, wears a crimson cassock and a matching, fez-like hat. With his white beard and paunch, the outfit gives him the vague look of Santa Claus.

His church, known also as the Syrian Orthodox Church, was founded in the year 452 after a schism with the bulk of the world's Christians. Of its 4 million members, half are descendants of converts in southern India's Kerala state. Others live in Germany, Sweden and in the United States, where immigrants from the Near East introduced the faith in the late 19th century. About 4,000 families worship today at Syriac Orthodox churches in America, with large communities in Los Angeles, Michigan, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Syria's Christians and Muslims have coexisted peacefully for centuries. Although most Syrians are Muslims, about one-tenth are Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, or followers of smaller sects such as the Syriac Orthodox.

"We are very good friends, let me say, brothers," he said of the country's majority Muslims.

ASSYRIAN-JAPANESE CLERGY RETURNS FROM IRAQ

Courtesy of the Washington Times (23 March); by Arnaud de Borchgrave

(ZNDA: Amman) A group of American anti-war demonstrators, part of a Japanese human-shield delegation, returned from Iraq yesterday with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present, with Iraqis eager to tell of their welcome for American troops.

The Rev. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor of the Assyrian Church of the East, said the trip to Iraq "had shocked me back to reality."

Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera, he said, "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam [Hussein]'s bloody tyranny."

Mr. Joseph said the Iraqis convinced him that Saddam is "a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists.

"Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so the [torture masters] could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

The pastor and others making it across the border into Jordan tell harrowing stories about their journey. The only gasoline station between Baghdad and the border, a distance of 400 miles, was blown up by U.S. fighter-bombers. The station, in the one-camel village of Ramadi, had the only telephone booth on the road across the desert and a Jordanian, who had stopped to call his parents in Amman to let them know he was on his way home, was killed in the explosion.

The few taxi drivers in Baghdad willing to drive to the Jordanian border are charging $1,500 per passenger. Very few Iraqis can afford the fare, and only about 300 "third-country nationals," mostly Sudanese and Egyptians, have reached the border post since the "shock and awe" campaign began. Travelers have to struggle with their luggage across the last two miles on foot to Al Karama, the first Jordanian outpost. From there, they are taken by bus to a tent city at the Ruwaished refugee camp, 36 miles inside Jordan.

The Baghdad-Jordan highway was busy with commercial traffic before the beginning of the war, with some 700 tanker-trucks shuttling daily with part of the 12,000 tons of oil consumed by Jordan every day. All of it comes from Iraq at discounted prices under the U.N. oil-for-food program. Some 2,600 Jordanian and 1,500 Iraqi tankers have been involved in the overland oil traffic. Movement was down to 140 tankers the day before the bombing started. It stopped abruptly two days ago.

Jordan had made plans for a quick switch to tankers anchored off Aqaba. Qatar had pledged to replace whatever shortfall Jordan experienced.

Jordanians see one favorable omen. Every day, almost a thousand white storks arrive at a supermarket parking lot on one of Amman's seven hills, a pit stop on their way from Africa to their East European breeding grounds. About 100,000 storks are expected to stop here over the next month, numbers not seen in 10 years. Jordanians take this as a sign of ample rain and a good harvest ahead.

The difference between official and private views of some ranking Jordanian officials may be an omen, too. Officially, they condemn the war and say they are "deeply troubled" by the prospect of repercussions of the war on the region, and describe the situation as "critical."

Privately, they say, the war is developing a new opportunity for peace in the Middle East. Says one former prime minister: "If the U.S. can get a new Iraq to recognize Israel as a quid pro quo for a final Palestinian settlement, others will fall into place — Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states. Iran would then have to pull back its military support for Hezbollah."

[Z-info: See Rev. Ken Joseph’s letter from Amman, Jordan in this week’s SURFS UP!]

SAN JOSE CELEBRATES AKITU FESTIVAL, RAISE MONEY FOR IRAQ

(ZNDA: San Jose) On Saturday the Assyrian American Association of San Jose, with the assistance of the local chapter of the Assyrain Aid Society of America, collected over $7600.00 for the Assyrians in North Iraq. The occasion was the Assyrian New Year party held in San Jose. Entertainment was provided by two Assyrian vocalists: Ogin and Ashur Bet-Sargis.

One week earlier, over 600 Assyrians from San Jose and surrounding communities took to the streets of downtown San Jose and demonstrated for the recognition of the Assyrian constitutional rights in Iraq.

SADDAM RECEIVED KEY TO CITY OF DETROIT IN 1980

Courtesy of the Detroit News (26 March); by Jennifer Brooks

(ZNDA: Detroit) Saddam Hussein has collected many things in his 24-year reign -- palaces, enemies. And the key to the city of Detroit.

"It is very strange, thinking about it now," said Pastor Jacob Yasso of Detroit's Sacred Heart Parish, who presented the key to the city, along with the compliments of then-Mayor Coleman A. Young, to the Iraqi leader in 1980. One of the mayor's staff gave Yasso the key as a courtesy to the city's Chaldean community.

(Caption: Pastor Jacob Yasso, right, of Detroit's Sacred Heart Parish traveled to Iraq to give the keys to the city of Detroit to Saddam Hussein.)

"Now, you must remember that in those days, Saddam Hussein was a puppet. He was an American puppet," said Yasso, who leads the Chaldean Catholic parish on Detroit's west side.

In the 1980s, Iraq and the United States were allied in their mistrust of Iran.

Even so, Yasso was surprised by his warm welcome in Baghdad in 1980. This welcome came from the same regime that denounced Yasso for speaking out from his pulpit against the nationalization of Iraq's schools. The Iraqi embassy squired Yasso and a delegation of 25 Chaldean Catholic on an all-expenses-paid trip to the homeland to celebrate Sacred Heart's 50th anniversary.

Saddam gave Sacred Heart something else: a check for $200,000 that paid off the church's debt, with enough left over to build a parish center. "Today, we use the center to teach American citizenship classes," Yasso said.

The priest still remembers his final words to Saddam.

"'Mr. President, we would like to have our Iraq in faithful hands,' I told him," Yasso recalled. "And he told me, 'Iraq is in faithful hands.'... I would like to know why he has done this to his people."