Power struggles stifle political life in the Middle East

This view of authority is limited, but its consequences are far-reaching. It assumes that authority depends on dissolving rival groups who may seek power, rather than winning a political debate to secure the backing of society, or a working majority within it, via an engaged nationwide discussion.  

Assyrian plight

The plight of the Assyrians, an indigenous ethnic group in parts of Syria, reveals the human impact of this war-driven and security-focused approach to national government.

During the 1920s and 1930s, around 5% of the population in the Jazira region were Assyrians.

Their communities extended to villages and towns along the northern border with Turkey. Assyrians played a vital role in the region, contributing greatly to agriculture, industry, and education,  helping drive wider progress and modernisation.

Read more: A tragic tale: How the Assyrians vanished from Syria

But over time, they faced aggression and their presence in the region was undermined and diminished, due to a range of measures taken against them, from dispossession and forced migration to massacres. There are now semi-abandoned Assyrian neighbourhoods.

A poignant day in an empty city

In the Assyrian-Kurdish city of Qamishli, we encountered one of the remaining Assyrians there and perhaps one of the last in the country. It was on a sunny day in the year 2000, around 100 years after the city was founded, and the place seemed empty and melancholic.

The man we met was the proprietor of a small snack shop. He appeared prematurely old, his life seemingly frozen in time. 

Unmarried, he lived alone with his widowed mother and had done since his childhood. The weight of long-suppressed sorrows inherited from previous generations was palpable in his words. 

Each day, he would rise early, tending to the bed and the aging furniture that lay unused, surrounded by perpetual sorrowful silence. He has stayed behind, watching successive waves of Assyrian emigration that emptied the community from Qamishli's streets.

He remained, his small snack shop clean and ready, as the majority of its potential customers left and his home turned into a desolate and sorrowful neighbourhood.

The shopkeeper was like a woman widowed at a young age, concealing her sadness from everyone and everything, except for the old mirrors of her ancient home.

Iraq's Chaldeans: political alliances can make matters worse

The situation of Iraq's Chaldeans mirrors that of the Assyrians in Syria.

But there is one big difference: Chaldean voices can still be heard, even as they are being choked. When they speak, they declare the determination of survivors of massacres and forced displacement to remain in their homeland.

Those who remain have become victims of the grip exerted by the Iraqi Shiite forces known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF). It has resulted in the disintegration of their fragile unity.

Exploiting their fear and vulnerability, the PMF has suffocated the Chaldeans and assimilated them into its wider authoritarian project, as reported in Baghdad's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper by correspondent Fadel Al-Nashmi.

The reporting tracks the rise to political prominence of a Chaldean Christian Catholic militia group called the Babylon Brigades, and the subsequent tangle of religious and political intrigue that would divide and weaken the Chaldeans.

Founded in 2018, the Babylon Brigades' leader, Rayan Al-Kaldani, gained control over the quota of five seats in Iraq's parliament, granted to Christian groups and formed a voting bloc known as the Babylon Movement.

Al-Kaldani achieved his rise to prominence by securing support from certain armed factions associated with the PMF. He maintained close ties with the Shiite Coordinating Framework Forces, to which the Babylon parliamentary bloc is affiliated, contributing to the formation of Mohammed Shia' Al-Sudani's government.

Consequently, a deputy from the bloc, Ivan Faiek, was appointed as minister of migration and displacement in Al-Sudani's government. She was to go on to become a controversial figure, as Christians chose to leave the country despite her appointment. 

Politicians and Patriarch divided

The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Iraq, Louis Sako, raised his objection to the practices of Al-Kaldani, his militia groups, and his parliamentary bloc.

Sako also stated that neither Al-Kaldani nor his group "represent the Christians" despite their false claim of belonging to the Chaldean Church.

In turn, Al-Kaldani and his group – backed by the PMF – launched a vigorous campaign to tarnish the Patriarch's reputation. Sako strongly criticised Al-Kaldani's actions, accusing him of "taking control of the Christian component's capabilities in Iraq and seizing the Christian quota for political purposes unrelated to the best interests of the Chaldeans."

It seems most likely that Al-Kaldani and his group have placed their true allegiance with the faction that enabled them to forcibly seize the representation of Chaldean Catholics within the Iraqi power structure, the PMF.

Sako went as far as to say that Al-Kaldani's group "seized Christian resources in the plains of Nineveh, Tel Keppe, and Alqosh, along with Christian families' homes in Baghdad."

Referring to Ivan Faiek, he said that was done "with the assistance of the woman he appointed in a ministerial position within the Iraqi government."

Sako put numbers on the extent to which his community is shrinking in the country: "Every month, 20 Christian families leave Iraq. The Iraqi Christian population, which stood at 1.4 million in 1987, has dwindled to 141,000 in 2021."

Concern in Europe and at the Vatican

European countries have expressed deep concern over the situation of Chaldeans in Iraq, as highlighted by Fadel Al-Nashmi's reporting from Baghdad.

The Vatican has drawn attention to wider support for the group, pointing out in a on its website: "Eleven European countries have issued a statement expressing their support for the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch in Iraq."

And so there is broad European support for the Patriarch Sako's call to safeguard the rights of Christians in Syria, who have inhabited the land, across national borders in the region, for two millennia.

The migration of Chaldeans and Assyrian Christians from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon occurs relatively silently and smoothly even as their predicament within their own countries continues to draw international attention. They are classified as migrants rather than refugees, and so they have not been confined to camps specifically set up for them.

Growing list of displacement

This has kept them out of the international spotlight, while also sparing them from the misery and humiliation of overcrowded camps inhabited by other minority groups from Syria and Iraq, which are also seen near borders in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey and Libya.

Sudan is the latest name on this list of nations afflicted by wretched displacement and distressing refugee camps. As two generals battle for power while reducing the nation to ruins, the people caught up in the fighting have started to scatter over borders.

As my colleague Houssam Itani aptly noted in Al Majalla,  these generals seem captivated by a familiar cry: "The weapons in our hands will remain the adornment of men."

Read more: Sudan's leaders stoop to new levels of vanity

It is a cry that is also heard by leaders of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi group in Yemen.