IRDP# 1395247

Number: 28200

Date: 1984/10/19

Top Secret and Personal and to be opened by the addressee

Autonomous Region Security Directorate

To: All Security Directorates Services in the Autonomous Region

Subject: The Assyrian Democratic Assembly

The General Security Directorate, 32, [The number specifies a regional security directorate] per its letter 71053, dated 1984/10/10, informed us that the revolutionary command council, National Security Council, has ordered the following:

1. To intensify personal and organizational differences between the mentioned group [The Assyrian Democratic Assembly] and the agent [Meaning traitor] Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party. This should be done by all available means so that their hostile joint efforts will be disrupted.

2. To induce the clergy from the Assyrian community and use them in ways that weaken the activities of this group [Assyrian Democratic Assembly] and to undermine the directives of this group. Also, assign some of them [clergy] to [illegible words] and obtain more information on the deserters from the relatives of the families, which have deserters and to coordinate with the Intelligence Service apparatus and the Office of General Military Intelligence.

3. To locate the printing facilities for the publications of the Assyrian group,

particularly because the publications resemble, in appearance and its method of technical production, the newspaper Tareeq Al-Sha’ab [The People’s Path], belonging to the agent [Meaning traitor] Communist Party.

4. To search for this group’s [Assyrian] separatist statements and to find what this group [Assyrian Democratic Assembly] advocates. [You are further charged] to establish relationship with it for the purpose of engaging it [Or its members] secretly in the service of national security. [Such action] must be taken discretely without alerting others, and so giving the subject case more value that it has.

Please do what is necessary about the subject and keep us informed with regards to paragraph (3) above.

With appreciation,

[Signature]

For/COLONEL, Security

Autonomous Region

Explanatory Notes : The Assyrian Democratic Assembly appeared on the opposition scene in about 1984 when the Assyrian Democratic Movement began to make an impact in the north of Iraq following the flight of its members from Baathist controlled urban areas in 1982. Led by Romeo Nissan Hakkari, a bodyguard to Mas¹ud Barzani, the head of the KDP, the ADA was a creation of the KDP in opposition to the ADM, in one of the early KDP efforts to co-opt the Assyrian opposition to Saddam Hussein.

The ADA lasted only about two years but the attempt to create a puppet Assyrian political entity continued. Throughout the 1980s the ADM functioned as an independent fighting unit but after the Gulf War, its fighters were incorporated into the KDP. At about this time, Francis Shabo, a leading member of the ADM became a minister in the KDP government. The influence of the ADM diminished with his assassination in 1993 by undiscovered parties. The Gabba d-Khiruta d-Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia Freedom Party) grows out of the Assyrian Democratic Assembly.