Mulla Mustafa Barzani

On a cold winter day in 1967, Mustafa Barzani makes the following comment about the Assyrians: “To those who do not accept their Kurdishness, we will say; go to the Arabs!”

The ethnic cleansing of the Assyrians and the idea of ​​assimilating them as Christian citizens in a future "Kurdistan" seems to have been planned since the Kurdish revolution in Iraq began in the early 1960s. Here is a unique testimony from a former bodyguard to imam Mustafa Barzani back in 1967.

Massoud Barzani's father, imam Mustafa Barzani, began his uprising against the central government in Baghdad in 1961 and some Assyrian leaders in Iraq actively supported the Kurds. The Assyrians had faced the same dilemma as their brothers in Turabdin did later in the 1990s; to choose side between the PKK and Turkish government. In Turabdin, the Assyrians chose to be neutral but were nevertheless affected by assasinations and expulsion. Today there are no more than a few thousand Assyrians left in Turabdin.

In northern Iraq, some Assyrians were convinced that the Kurds were fighting a fair fight, thus those Assyrians wanted to be part of it, while others wanted Kurdish protection of their families and villages. However, the result was not much better than in Turabdin. Assyrians on leading positions within the KDP have often been eliminated, such as Arbil's Governor Franso Toma Hariri [1], while many Assyrians moved to Iraq's major cities or abroad to find a safer life. Kurdish families took over the villages that the Assyrians left. Only in Nohadra (Kurdish Duhok) province about 60 Assyrian villages are still occupied.

Francis Yousef Shabo, former MP in KRG Parlaiment