ISIS Onslaught Engulfs Assyrian Christians
as Militants Destroy Ancient Art
Annie Barnard ("The New York Times," February 26, 2015)
ISTANBUL — The reports are like something out of a distant era of ancient
conquests: entire villages emptied, with hundreds taken prisoner, others
kept as slaves; the destruction of irreplaceable works of art; a tax on
religious minorities, payable in gold.
A rampage reminiscent of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in
reality, according to reports by residents, activist groups and the assailants
themselves, a description of the modus operandi of the Islamic State’s
self-declared caliphate this week. The militants have prosecuted a relentless
campaign in Iraq and Syria against what have historically been religiously and
ethnically diverse areas with traces of civilizations dating to ancient
Mesopotamia.
The latest to face the militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of
northeastern Syria, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some
speaking a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Assyrian leaders have counted 287 people taken captive, including 30
children and several dozen women, along with civilian men and fighters from
Christian militias, said Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist who had
just toured the area, in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Qamishli. Thirty
villages have been emptied, he said.
The Syriac Military Council, a local Assyrian militia, put the number of
those taken at 350.
Reached in Qamishli, Adul Ahad Nissan, 48, an accountant and music composer
who fled his village before the brunt of the fighting, said a close friend
and his wife had been captured.
“I used to call them every other day. Now their mobile is off,” he said. “
I tried and tried. It’s so painful not to see your friends again.”
Members of the Assyrian diaspora have called for international
intervention, and on Thursday, warplanes of the United States-led coalition
struck
targets in the area, suggesting that the threat to a minority enclave had
galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat did in the Kurdish Syrian city of
Kobani last year.
The assault on the Assyrian communities comes amid battles for a key
crossroads in the area. But to residents, it also seems to be part of the
latest
effort by the Islamic State militants to eradicate or subordinate anyone
and anything that does not comport with their vision of Islamic rule —
whether a minority sect that has survived centuries of conquerors and
massacres
or, as the world was reminded on Thursday, the archaeological traces of
pre-Islamic antiquity.
An Islamic State video showed the militants smashing statues with
sledgehammers inside the Mosul Museum, in northern Iraq, that showcases recent
archaeological finds from the ancient Assyrian empire. The relics include items
from the palace of King Sennacherib, who in the Byron poem “came down like
the wolf on the fold” to destroy his enemies.
“A tragedy and catastrophic loss for Iraqi history and archaeology beyond
comprehension,” Amr al-Azm, a Syrian anthropologist and historian, called
the destruction on his Facebook page.
“These are some of the most wonderful examples of Assyrian art, and they’
re part of the great history of Iraq, and of Mesopotamia,” he said in an
interview. “The whole world has lost this.”
Islamic State militants seized the museum — which had not yet opened to the
public — when they took over Mosul in June and have repeatedly threatened
to destroy its collection.
In the video, put out by the Islamic State’s media office for Nineveh
Province — named for an ancient Assyrian city — a man explains, “The monuments
that you can see behind me are but statues and idols of people from
previous centuries, which they used to worship instead of God.”
A message flashing on the screen read: “Those statues and idols weren’t
there at the time of the Prophet nor his companions. They have been excavated
by Satanists.”
The men, some bearded and in traditional Islamic dress, others clean-shaven
in jeans and T-shirts, were filmed toppling and destroying artifacts. One
is using a power tool to deface a winged lion much like a pair on display
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has presented itself as a
modern-day equivalent of the conquering invaders of Sennacherib’s day, or as
Islamic zealots smashing relics out of religious conviction.
Yet in the past, the militants have veered between ideology and pragmatism
in their relationship to antiquity — destroying historic mosques, tombs and
artifacts that they consider forms of idolatry, but also selling more
portable objects to fill their coffers.
The latest eye-catching destruction could have a more strategic aim, said
Mr. Azm, who closely follows the Syrian conflict and opposes both the
Islamic State and the government.
“It’s all a provocation,” he said, aimed at accelerating a planned effort,
led by Iraqi forces and backed by United States warplanes, to take back
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“They want a fight with the West because that’s how they gain credibility
and recruits,” Mr. Azm said. “They want boots on the ground. They want
another Falluja,” a reference to the 2004 battle in which United States
Marines, in the largest ground engagement since Vietnam, took that Iraqi city
from Qaeda-linked insurgents whose organization would eventually give birth to
the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has been all-inclusive in its violence against the modern
diversity of Iraq and Syria. It considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and
has destroyed Shiite shrines and massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi
soldiers. It has demanded that Christians living in its territories pay the
jizya, a tax on religious minorities dating to early Islamic rule.
Islamic State militants have also slaughtered fellow Sunni Muslims who
reject their rule, killing hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in
eastern
Syria in one clash alone. They have also massacred and enslaved members of
the Yazidi sect in Iraq.
The latest to face its wrath, the Assyrian Christians, consider themselves
the descendants of the ancient Assyrians and have survived often bloody
Arab, Mongolian and Ottoman conquests, living in modern times as a small
minority community periodically under threat. Thousands fled northern Iraq
last
year as Islamic State militants swept into Nineveh Province.
Early in February, according to Assyrian groups inside and outside Syria,
came a declaration from the Islamic State that Christians in a string of
villages along the Khabur River in Syrian Hasaka Province would have to take
down their crosses and pay the jizya, traditionally paid in gold.
That prompted some to flee, and others to take a more active part in
fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish militias, helping take back some territory.
Islamic State militants hit back, hard, driving more than 1,000 Assyrian
Christians from their homes, some crossing the Khabur River, a tributary of
the Euphrates, in small boats by night.
Local Assyrian leaders are negotiating with the Islamic State through
mediators, said Mr. Dawoud, the deputy president of the Assyrian Democratic
Organization. The Assyrian International News Agency, a website sharing
community news, said that Arab tribal leaders were mediating talks to exchange
the prisoners for captured Islamic State fighters and that the Islamic State
had agreed to free Christian civilians but not fighters.
Mr. Nissan, the accountant, described how he and others crammed into a
truck, paying exorbitant rates, to escape. Earlier, he said, Nusra Front
fighters and other Syrian insurgents had looted the village without harming
anyone, but he feared ISIS more because “they consider us infidels.”
“I made a vow, when I return I want to kiss the soil of my village and pray
in the church,” he said, adding that he had composed a song for the
residents of Nineveh Province when they were displaced a few months ago.
“I called it ‘Greetings from Khabur to Nineveh,’ ” he said. “Now we’re
facing the same scenario
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