Monde arabe Entretien réalisé par Pierre-Jean Luizard, 24 janvier 1999 |
I came from Irak. My origins are of a village in Northern Irak, Sanate, a Christian village in Bahdinan, very close to the Turkish border. I belong to a Christian family, that is member of a national and ethnical minority, the Assyrian-Chaldeans. This people live in Irak since the dawn of History. At the IIIrd century, some texts in Syriac attest their presence in this province. I borned in Sanate in 1944, and I made my first studies there, like my father. When the border between Turkey and Irak was fixed in 1926, one year after that the vilayet of Mosul was attached to Irak, the village was in the Irakian side, but less far of seven kilometers from the border. But my family had small holdings in the Turkish side. Then, the first thing that had done the Iraqi governement was the creation of a primary school in 1926 in Sanate. Of course in that school teaching was made in Arabic, which few people spoke then. My mother tongue is the sureth[1] . Because of our environment we knew the Kurdish too and we spoke it fluently. At school, I learnt Arabic. The teachers were mostly Christian from Mosul, some Assyrian-Chaldeans who had been arabized. So I made all my primary studies in my village. My father was mostly a caravaneer and, with fifteen other caravaneers, he imported from Zākho, at nine hours of walks from Sanate, all that people need in the region. He furnished Christian villages as Muslim Kurdish villages, in the Iraqi side as the Turkish one. At this time the border was permeable and it was easy to pass it. My mother's village was in the Turkish side (a village called Harbol, of which Turks has turkized the name now). Then, by accident, because of the layout of the border, I had an Iraqi grand-father and a Turkish one. But I had had any problem for having the iraqi nationality.
Northern Iraq At this time, the troubles in Kurdistan did happen more to the South, in the region of Sulaymāniyye controlled by Shiekh Mahmūd, and we had a feeling of quite safety in Bahdinan. [2] The primary school of Sanate had given tens of civil servants, teachers and journalists to the Iraqi state. But in Harbol, my mother's village that remained in the Turkish state, there was no school before 1980. My mother was illiterate and didn't speak Arabic. In short, Sanate had its own school, its church and its gendarmerie. My community, the Assyrian-Chaldeans' one, is shared between Nestorians or « Assyrians », and Catholics who call Chaldeans ».
Today there are towns of 10 or 15 000 inhabitants that are entirely Assyrian-Chaldeans where the sureth is the current language : Ankawa , Tell Kayf, Bartellī, Karaqōsh, Al-Qōsh. Ankawa is now situated in the area ruled by Bārzanī and its PDK, while the else towns, next to Mosul, are still in the Arabic area controlled by the Iraqi governement. But in the civil war between Kurds, and in the conflict that oppose Bārzanī to Tālabāni since 1993, the Assyrian-Chaldeans are neutral and their milices, especially of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, had even helped to separate belligerents, as in Dehōk. Embargo is a shame. It revolted me from the very start. Who had givent the right to Americans and their allies to starve a people and to destroy a state ? The maintenance of the embargo is now the greatest threatening for the Iraqi people. It generates misery, illiteracy and ignorance, for a country that had staked in its own history on knowledge and education and its aims to the regression of Irak. In my next book, LEpopée du Tigre et de lEuphrate, I attest that our country had been the cradle of writing, civilisations, and the most inventive country in History, but today it is a land that cow-boys try to destroy. The United-States are liable for the regression of Irak. For ignorance and illiteracy generates in their turn fanatism and extremism.
Notes [1] An Eastern dialect of the Syriac, the sureth [2] the epicentre of the Kurdish movement in Irak has moved from the South - in the region of Sulaymāniyye, where which Sheik Mahmūd Barzinjī led the revolts since the end of 1910s until 1930s -, to the North, that is a region ruled by the Bārzanīs ,and that includes Badinan and most of christians. [3] Rāya, the « subdued », those who pay taxes, or the non-muslims. In Kurdistan, the word is opposite to ashīra, those who have the right to have weapons, the « free men » ; it was used for the peasantry out of tribes, that had to pay taxes to the state as to the local agha, who was often a Kurdish muslim. [4] The Assyrians in mountains were, like their Kurdish neibourghs, socially organised as clans, or ashīra-s, ruled by chiefs of war, or Mellek-s , similar to the Kurdish agha-s. Let's remind that the ottoman system recognized only cults (millet-s) but refused to recognize ethnies. Ashīra-s' autonomy was an anawoved way, under cover of a tribal recognition, to admit an else identity, that was not only religious. Nestorians profited from this recognition since the very beginning of the Ottoman domination. [5] Millet meaned at the Ottoman period the religious communities in empire to which was given a certain autonomy in administration and internal affairs. The Assyrians were the first to profit from their millet, and it had strenghened their image of free men for Chaldean rāya-s. The Chaldean millet dated of the second half of the XIXth century. [6] Kurdistānī : the Kurdish modern policy is liable to the neologism kurdistānī. This word refers to a territory, Kurdistan, included all its communities (Kurd, Arab, Turkmen, Syriac, Christian, Yezīdīs and else). Kurdī means Kurds as an ethny. |