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Simele massacre

Coordinates: 36°51′30″N 42°51′00″E / 36.858334°N 42.850099°E / 36.858334; 42.850099 (Simele massacre)
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Simele massacre
  Area where villages were looted.
  Heavily targeted Assyrian villages.
LocationNorth of the Kingdom of Iraq, notably at Simele
DateAugust 7, 1933 (1933-08-07) – August 11, 1933 (1933-08-11)
Attack type
summary executions, Mass murder, Looting
Deaths600 - +3,000

The Simele Massacre ([ܦܪܡܬܐ ܕܣܡܠܐ Premta d-Simele] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) was a massacre committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic targeting of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933. The term is used to describe not only the massacre in Simele, but also the killing spree that continued among 63 Assyrian villages in the Dohuk and Mosul districts that led to the deaths of an estimated 3,000 Assyrian villagers[1][2] (Official British and Iraqi sources however put the death toll at some 600[3]). The Assyrian people at the time were emerging from one of the darkest periods of their history. During the Assyrian genocide at the end of World War I, more than half of their population was massacred by Ottoman Turks and Kurds.[4]

The term 'genocide' was coined by Raphael Lemkin, who was directly influenced by the story of this massacre and the Armenian Genocide.[5]

Iraqi independence and crisis

Throughout the crisis, beginning in the late spring of 1933, the American representative in Iraq, Paul Knabenshue, described public animosity towards the Assyrians as at 'fever heat.' [6] With Iraqi independence, the new Assyrian spiritual-temporal leader, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, demanded the Assyrians be given autonomy within Iraq, seeking support from Britain. He pressed his case before the League of Nations in 1932. His followers planned to resign from the Assyrian levies (a levy under the command of the British, that served British interests), and to re-group as a militia and concentrate in the north, creating a de facto Assyrian enclave. In June 1933, the Patriarch was invited to Baghdad for negotiations with Hikmat Sulayman's government and was detained there after refusing to relinquish temporal authority. Mar Shimun would eventually be exiled to Cyprus, thus forcing the head of the Assyrian Church of the East to be located in Chicago to this day.[7]

Massacres

Clashes at Dirabun

In 21 July 1933, more than 600 Assyrians led by Malik Yaqu crossed the border into Syria in hope of receiving asylum from the French. They were however disarmed and refused asylum, and were subsequently given light arms and sent back to Iraq on 4 August and they decided to surrender themselves to the Iraqi Army.[8] While crossing the Tigris in the Assyrian village of Dirabun, a clash erupted between them and a brigade of the Iraqi army, and despite using heavy artillery the Iraqis were driven back to their military base in Dirabun. The Assyrians, convinced that the Army had targeted them deliberately, attacked the Army's barracks with little success.[9] They were driven back to Syria upon the arrival of Iraqi aeroplanes. The Iraqi army lost 33 soldiers during the fighting while the Assyrian irregulars suffered much lower losses.[10] Historians don't agree on which start started the clashes at the border. The British Administrative Inspector for Mosul R. Stafford holds that the Assyrians had no intention in clashing with the Iraqis while the Iraqi historian Khaldun Husry claims that it was Yaqu's men who provoked the army at Dirabun.[3]

Beginning of the massacres

Bakr Sidqi led the Iraqi Army during the Massacre of Simele.

Even though all military activities ceased by 6 August, exaggerated stories of atrocities committed by the Assyrians in Dirabun and rumours spread that Christians were planning to blow bridges and poison drinking water in major Iraqi cities.[11] The agitation against Assyrians was also encouraged by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's Arab nationalist government, which saw it as a distraction to the continuous Shiite revolt in the southern part of the country.[12][13][14]

The Iraqi army led by Bakr Sidqi moved north in order to crush the Assyrians once and for all. They started executing every Assyrian male found in the mountainous Bekher region between Zakho and Duhok starting from 8 August. Assyrian civilians were transported in military trucks from Zakho and Dohuk to uninhabited places in batches of eight or ten where they were shot with machine guns and run over by heavy armoured cars to make sure no one survived.[15]

Looting of villages

During the massacres in August 1933 Kurdish, Arab and Yazidi tribes were encouraged to loot Assyrian villages. Firstly the Kurdish tribes of Gulli, Sindi and Selivani were encouraged by the mayor of Zakho to loot villages to the north east of Simele,[16] Yazidis and Kurds also raided Assyrian villages in Shekhan and Amadiya.[17] Most women and children from those villages took refuge in Simele and Dohuk.[18]

In 9 August the Arab tribes of Shammar and Jubur started crossing the right bank of the Tigris and raiding Assyrian Villages on the plains to the south of Dohuk.[18] They were mostly driven by the loss of a great number of their livestock to draught the previous years.[19]

More than sixty Assyrian villages were looted, and even though women and children were mostly left to take refuge in neighbouring villages, men were sometimes rounded up handed over to the army by whom they were duly shot.[17] Some of those villages were completely burned down, and most of them were later inhabited by Kurds.[20][21]

The massacre of Simele

The Lethbridge Herald,
August 18, 1933

The town of Simele became the last refuge to Assyrians from looted villages. The mayor of Zakho arrived with a military force in the 8th and 9 August to disarm the city, during that time thousands of refugees flocked around the police post in the town when they were told by officials that they would be safe under the Iraqi flag.[18] The 10th of August saw the arrival of Kurdish and Arab looters, who undeterred by the local police took away the freshly cut wheat and barley. During the night of 10th-11th the Arab inhabitants of Simele joined the looting, the Assyrian villagers could only watch as their Arab neighbours drove their flocks before them.[22]

On the 11th of August the Villagers were ordered to leave the police post and return to their houses, they obeyed reluctantly, and as they were heading back Iraqi soldiers in armoured cars arrived and the Iraqi flag flying over the police post was seen being pulled down.[22] Suddenly and without warning the troops opened fire on the defenceless Assyrians indiscriminately. The officer responsible of the force Ismael Abbawi then ordered his troops not to target women. Lieutenant Colonel R. S. Stafford, the British Administrative Inspector for Mosul describes the ensuing massacre as follows:[23]

A cold blooded and methodical massacre of all the men in the village then followed, a massacre which for the black treachery in which it was conceived and the callousness with which it was carried out, was as foul a crime as any in the blood stained annals of the Middle East. The Assyrians had no fight left in them, partly because of the state of mind to which the events of the past week had reduced them, largely because they were disarmed. Had they been armed it seems certain that Ismail Abawi Tohalla and his bravos would have hesitated to take them on in fair fight. Having disarmed them, they proceeded with the massacre according to plan. This took some time. Not that there was any hurry, for the troops had the whole day ahead of them. Their opponents were helpless and there was no chance of any interference from any quarter whatsoever. Machine gunners set up their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terror stricken wretches in the crowded rooms, fired among them until not a man was left standing in the shambles. In some other instance the blood lust of the troops took a slightly more active form, and men were dragged out and shot or bludgeoned to death and their bodies thrown on a pile of dead.

In his depiction of the massacre, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII the Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East mentions how "girls were raped and made to march naked before Iraqi commanders. Children were run over by military cars. Pregnant women were bayonetted. Children were flung in the air and pierced on to the points of bayonets. Holy books were used for the burning of the massacred."[24]

On the 13th of August, Bakr Sidqi moved his troops to Alqosh where he planned to inflict a further massacre on the Assyrians who found refuge there had he not been prevented by the Chaldean Patriarch Yousef VI Emmanuel II Thomas.[22][25][26]

Targeted villages

The targeted villages in the Simele and Zakho districts
List of targeted villages[27]
Ala Keena Bameri Betershy Dairke Gond Naze Kaserezden Korekavana Majel Makhte Sirchuri
Aloka Barcawra Betafrey Dair Kishnik Harkonda Kerry Kowashey Rabibyia Shekhidra
Badalliya Baroshkey Bidari Derjendy Idleb Kitba Lazga Rekawa Spendarook
Baderden Basorik Biswaya Fishkhabour Kaberto Khalata Mansouriya Sar Shorey Tal Zet
Bagerey Bastikey Carbeli Garvaly Karpel Kharab Koli Mawani Sezary Tel Khish
Bakhitmey Benaringee Chem Jehaney Gereban Karshen Kharsheniya Qasr Yazdin Sidzari Zeniyat

Today, most of these villages are inhabited by Kurds. The main campaign lasted until August 16, but violent raids on Assyrians were being reported up to the end of the month. After the campaign, Badr Sidqi was invited to Baghdad for a victory rally.[28] The campaign resulted in one third of the Assyrian population of Iraq fleeing to Syria.[29]

Aftermath

The Assyrian town of Alqosh where a massacre was planned on its population.
Assyrian refugees on a wagon moving to a newly constructed village on the Khabur, Syria.

In 18 August the Iraqi troops entered Mosul where they were given an enthusiastic reception by its Muslim inhabitants. Triumphant arches were erected and decorated with melons pierced with daggers, symbolising the heads of murdered Assyrians.[30] The crown prince Ghazi himself came to the city to award "victorious" colours to those military and tribal leaders who participated in the massacres and the looting.[31] Anti-Christian feeling was at its height in Mosul, and the Christians of the city were largely confined to their houses during the whole month in fear of further retaliation by the frenzied mob.[31]

The Iraqi army later paraded the streets of Baghdad in celebration of its victories.[32] Bakr Sidqi was promoted; he later led Iraq's first military coup and became a prime minister.[33]

Immediately after the massacre and the repression of the alleged Assyrian uprising, the Iraqi government demanded a conscription bill. Non-Assyrian Iraqi tribesmen offered to serve in the Iraqi army, to counter the Assyrians. In late August, the government of Mosul demanded that the central government ‘ruthlessly’ stamp out the rebellion, and that it eliminate all foreign influence in Iraqi affairs, and that the government take immediate steps to enact a law for compulsory military service. The next week, 49 Kurdish tribal chieftains joined in a pro-conscription telegram to the government, expressing thanks for punishing the ‘Assyrian insurgents’,[6] stating that a "nation can be proud of itself only through its power, and since evidence of this power is the army,"[6] they requested compulsory military service. Rashid Ali presented the bill to the parliament. His government fell before it was legislated and Jamil Midfai’s government enacted conscription in January 1934.[34]

From the nationalists’ point of view, the Assyrian levies were British proxies, to be used by their ‘masters’ to destroy the new Iraqi state whose independence the British had consistently opposed. The British allowed their Assyrian auxiliary troops to retain their arms and granted them special duty and privileges: guarding military air installations and receiving higher pay than the Iraqi Arab recruits. Under British protection, the Assyrian Levies did not become Iraqi citizens after independence. The nationalists believed the British were hoping for the Assyrians to destroy Iraq’s internal cohesion by becoming independent and by inciting others such as the Kurds to follow their example.

The massacres and looting had a deep psychological impact on all Assyrians. Stafford reported their low morale upon arrival in Alqosh:[35]

When I visited Alqosh myself on August 21st I found the Assyrians, like the Assyrians elsewhere, utterly panic-stricken. Not only were they disturbed, but their spirit was completely broken. It was difficult to recognize in their cowed demeanour the proud mountaineers whom everyone had known so well and admired so much for the past dozen years.

The massacre would eventually lead to 15,000 Assyrians leaving the Nineveh Plains for neighbouring French Mandate of Syria, and build 35 new villages on the banks of the Khabur River.[36][37]

Cultural impact and legacy

Church Of Martyrs - named after the massacre stands today in the town of Simele.
August in Syriac with the number 7 is often the symbol chosen by Assyrian organizations.

August 7 officially became known as Martyrs Day or National Day of Mourning by the Assyrian community in memory for the Simele massacre, as it was declared so by the Assyrian Universal Alliance in 1970.[38] In 2004, the Syrian government banned an Assyrian political organization from commemorating the event, and threatened arrests if any were to break the ban.[39]

Many Assyrian music artists such as Shlimon Bet Shmuel have written songs about the event.[40] Thousands of poems and stories have been written about the incident, including one by the American William Saroyan, titled "Seventy Thousand Assyrians", written in 1934;

…We're washed up as a race, we're through, it's all over, why should I learn to read the (Assyrian) language? We have no writers, we have no news — well, there is a little news: once in a while the English encourage the Arabs to massacre us, that is all. It's an old story, we know all about it.

— [41][42]

A novel of the same name appeared in English in 2002 and in Persian translation from Tehran in 2005. The author began his story with the events of 1915 in southeast Turkey and closed with the Simele massacre.

The Simele massacre inspired Raphael Lemkin to create the concept of "Genocide".[43] In 1933, Lemkin made a presentation to the Legal Council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid, for which he prepared an essay on the Crime of Barbarity as a crime against international law. The concept of the crime, which later evolved into the idea of genocide, was based on the Simele massacre, the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust.[5]

The massacres had also a deep impact on the newly established Kingdom of Iraq. Kanan Makiya argues that the killing of Assyrians transcended tribal, religious and ethnic barriers as Arabs, Kurds and Yazidis were united in their anti-Assyrian and anti-western sentiments. According to him the massacre was "the first genuine expression of national independence in a former Arab province of the Ottoman Empire".[44]

The British were standing firmly behind the leaders of their former colony during crisis, despite the popular animosity towards them. General Headlam of the British military mission in Baghdad was quoted saying: "the government and people have good reasons to be thankful to Colonel Bakr Sidqi".[45]

See also

References

  1. ^ International Federation for Human Rights — "Displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi refugees in Iran", 2003.
  2. ^ "The Origins and Developments of Assyrian Nationalism", Committee on International Relations Of the University of Chicago, by Robert DeKelaita [1]
  3. ^ a b Zubaida, Sam. Contested nations: Iraq and the - Assyrian (PDF). p. 8. Cite error: The named reference "Zubaida12" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ Joseph Yacoub, La question assyro-chaldéenne, les Puissances européennes et la SDN (1908–1938), 4 vol., thèse Lyon, 1985, p. 156.
  5. ^ a b Raphael Lemkin - EuropeWorld, 22/6/2001
  6. ^ a b c Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny, Reeva S. Simon, 2004. Cite error: The named reference "Simon" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ Nerstorian Patriarchs
  8. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 136
  9. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 145
  10. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 146
  11. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 183
  12. ^ Makiya 1998, p. 169
  13. ^ Joseph 2000, p. 198
  14. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 149
  15. ^ Stafford 2006, pp. 154–155
  16. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 167
  17. ^ a b Stafford 2006, p. 168
  18. ^ a b c Stafford 2006, p. 158
  19. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 169
  20. ^ The Assyrian Affair Of 1933 (II), Khaldun S. Husry
  21. ^ Makiya 1998, p. 168
  22. ^ a b c Stafford 2006, p. 159 Cite error: The named reference "Stafford159" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  23. ^ Stafford 2006, pp. 160–161
  24. ^ Shimun, Eshai (2010). The Assyrian Tragedy. Xlibris Corporation. p. 48. ISBN 9781453511435.
  25. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 162
  26. ^ لماذا نحتفل بيوم الشهيد ..؟؟, يعكوب ابونا
  27. ^ Majed Eshoo, "The Fate Of Assyrian Villages Annexed To Today's Dohuk Governorate In Iraq"
  28. ^ Stafford, R. S. (1934). "Iraq and the Problem of the Assyrians". International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939). 13 (2): 159–185. JSTOR 2603135.
  29. ^ The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, by Justin MacCarthy
  30. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 184
  31. ^ a b Stafford 2006, p. 188
  32. ^ Anderson & Stansfield 2006, pp. 23–24
  33. ^ Anderson & Stansfield 2006, p. 25
  34. ^ Nisan, Mordechai (2002). Minorities in the Middle East: a history of struggle and self-expression. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 0786413751.
  35. ^ Stafford 2006, p. 171
  36. ^ "Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook" By Nicholas Awde. Page 11.
  37. ^ Assyrian Autumn on the Khabur, Shlama.be
  38. ^ "Why is the 7th of August an Assyrian Martyrs' Day?", By Aprim Shapira
  39. ^ Good Morning Assyria, Zinda Magazine.
  40. ^ Premtad Seemel, Shlemon Bet Shmuel.
  41. ^ William Saroyan, "Seventy Thousand Assyrians," in William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories. New York: New Directions, 1934
  42. ^ Seventy Thousand Assyrians, William SAROYAN, WikiQuotes.
  43. ^ The Man Who Invented Genocide: The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin, by James Joseph Martin. Page 166. 1984.
  44. ^ Makiya 1998, p. 170
  45. ^ Makiya 1998, p. 174

Further reading

36°51′30″N 42°51′00″E / 36.858334°N 42.850099°E / 36.858334; 42.850099 (Simele massacre)

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