The ‘severe penalty’ was fortunately annulled after US officials intervened to support Mr Bello, so no more came of this particular incident. The US was clearly concerned about his position as an open critic of the KRG according the cables in the following year — it is no surprise that this day would come given the right circumstances: when an emboldened KRG operating in a climate of lawlessness, would take advantage of the tumult and uncertainty to impose its will onto lands and people not under its political jurisdiction.

We can see that despite the safe zone established in 1991 which descended into civil war among the different Kurdish factions (eventually resulting in Barzani hegemony) through the 2003 invasion and ousting of Saddam (resulting in even more gains made by the KRG), territories home to Assyrians were still on the menu as ISIS’ territorial project receded. The parties comprising the KRG are simply not content with their lot and have expanded their project to include more areas seemingly by the year — all enabled by the vacuum of power and law in the northern territories of Iraq. This expansion is fueled by their own rivalry — no side is seemingly willing to enter into open conflict with each other again, preferring instead to compete in terms of assets, military power, and land.

I had consulted Mr Bello and his colleagues when I wrote a report regarding the under-representation of local Assyrian elements in the security of the Nineveh Plain pre-ISIS and the over-representation by minority Kurds supported and parachuted in by the KDP. Given the numbers obtained at the time, it was clear that the security situation pre-ISIS was dominated by people who had no stake in towns like Tel Keppe, so it was no surprise to me to see peshmerga fleeing such areas in 2014 — even if they were not ordered to retreat by their superiors as they had been, it was not their homes and families they were supposedly tasked with defending, but ours.

The Referendum

It must be said in no uncertain terms: the removal of two elected and long-standing mayors unsympathetic to the aims and policies of the KDP, by the KDP is linked to the controversial KRG referendum scheduled for September 25th 2017.

There is a reason this is happening now in what the KRG presently refer to as ‘Kurdistani’ areas — a politically charged word they have only recently deployed in their lobbying efforts to designate land mostly populated by non-Kurds, but according to them, belonging to Kurdistan. In order to sidestep a kind of overt, creeping ethno-fascism, simple semantics are deployed to soften the message. The KRG have learned to not refer to Assyrians (right now) as “Kurdish Christians”, but rather Kurdistani Christians living in Kurdistani areas. This is the word they are pushing shamelessly in Western offices, but it is a word which only dresses up an old strategy in new clothes: to annex the Nineveh Plain, even if the area has, even in modern history, a predominantly non-Kurdish population.

The policies pushed by the KDP in the Nineveh Plain have long affected other minorities such as the Yazidis in Shingal to the west, as Matthew Barber writes here:

In Shingal (“Sinjar” in Arabic) after 2003, the KDP quickly became a powerful presence. Many Yazidis were open to pursuing a future for Shingal as part of Kurdistan, hoping that life under Kurdish government would offer greater rights for minorities than had been the case under Ba’thist rule. But from those early days, the KDP asa’ish began systematically arresting and intimidating Yazidi civilians who joined competing political parties, especially those who favored keeping Shingal’s administration under the authority of the central government. Though services in Shingal are almost entirely paid for by Baghdad, the KDP bullied non-KDP Nineveh officials out of Shingal so that it could maintain administrative control. Shingal’s “mayors” (qaymaqam), including the current one, are never elected by the local people, but are appointed by the party and are, of course, always party loyalists. Despite the fact that the KDP completely dominated Shingal, it remained one of Iraq’s least developed and most marginalized districts.

For Yazidis, a historically persecuted and little known community, the appointing of a mayor rather than the process of electing one is a long-standing practice imposed on them against their will by outside forces. This top-down structure which robs Yazidis of their freedom and dignity is now being imposed on Assyrians with the same intensity and by the same outside force.