"We will survive. There will be Assyrians living on Mars one day", who made this imaginative and hopeful statement is Peter BetBasoo, founder, together with Firas Jatou, of the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), founded in Chicago in 1995. In more than thirty years of activity, AINA has become a point of reference for Assyrians, that is, the faithful of the Assyrian Church of the East scattered among their native lands of Turkey, Iraq and Syria and the numerous diaspora communities. In total there should be around 500,000 people, but the numbers are not well defined. In a Middle East ravaged by the bleak Dioscuri Israel and the US, with Syria and Iraq in a precarious balance, the Assyrians seem to be a theme to be left in the background. Yet, their story tells of a remarkable strength, capable of resisting the upheavals of history with unexpected effectiveness. This is also demonstrated by the vitality of AINA of BetBasoo, a constantly updated reality.
Historical Notes
After decades of near-total indifference, with the court of the Ottoman Empire alternating periods of tolerance with episodic massacres, such as those of 1895, the Assyrian Church of the East rose to the forefront of European public opinion, especially British, at the end of the First World War. For the Assyrians it was a grandly tragic time. The militias, led by highly skilled guerrilla leaders such as Agha Petros, gave pro-Ottoman Kurdish troops a run for their money by seeking a direct link with the Entente powers. Russia and Britain used the presence of these allies to distract the Young Turk army.
In those difficult years, Patriarch Shimun XIX Benyamin took a leading role in the nascent Assyro-Chaldean nationalism. Christians in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, to a lesser extent, sought some form of political unity among the different denominations to resist Ottoman offensives, awaiting outside help that never arrived. On the contrary, the collapse of Tsarist Russia made a crucial ally disappear. The consolidation of Assyro-Chaldean nationalism was the result of an effervescent cultural climate to which they had contributed to two factors: the ever-increasing presence of Christian missionaries, especially Protestants, in the decadent Ottoman Empire and the Europeanization of parts of the Assyrian elite. The latter absorbed some ideologies of the Old Continent, first and foremost nationalism and, to a lesser extent, Socialism as can be seen in the case of Freydun Atturaya, one of the founding fathers of the first Assyrian political party: the Assyrian Socialist Party.
The sacrifice of thousands of Assyrians in the First World War, culminating in the genocide known as Sayfo (which literally means "sword" in Syriac), perpetrated by Ottoman officers at the same time as the massacre of Armenians, had significant international consequences. Surma D'Bait Mar Shimun -- aunt of Shimun XXIII, the very young patriarch of the Assyrian Church -- promoted the Assyro-Chaldean cause, especially in London. The goal was to obtain an autonomous state or region for the Assyro-Chaldeans. The Assyrian Church of the East repeatedly appealed to the League of Nations but to no avail other than growing suspicion on the part of the infant SMiddle Eastern tati, still halfway between total independence and control of the old colonial powers of France and Great Britain. This led to further massacres and the acceleration of the diaspora of Assyrian believers in the West, especially in the United States, but also towards Australia. The patriarch himself, Shimun XXIII, had to leave Iraq for the United States. From Chicago the head of the Assyrian Church still devoted himself to the return of the Assyrians to their native lands, but the manner of the end of his patriarchate threw despair into the community: after resigning and marrying creating a certain scandal, Shimun XXIII was assassinated in California in the mid-seventies by a distant relative with problems ofalcoholism. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, shaken by events, thus decided to end the hereditary succession.
The Present
"Most Assyrians live outside their ancestral lands today. The Assyrians preserve their history, language, culture and tradition, living at the same time in the present, adapting and changing, but never forgetting who they are and where they come from", BetBasoo perfectly synthesizes the condition of the Assyrian Church of the East. Some of the remaining communities in Iraq, concentrated in the Nineveh Plain, were severely strained by the ISIS occupation between 2014 and 2017. Iraqi Christians had a moment of great emotion and, in a certain sense, redemption with Pope Francis's historic visit to their country. Francis visited Erbil, Mosul, and other cities in March 2021, instilling great hope in the faithful prostrated by the many turbulence of previous years. However, the phase of relative tranquility lasted very little. The collapse of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, with the simultaneous rise to power of former Islamic guerrilla Al Jolani/Al Sharaa, has raised further concerns. Now that the war in Iran and Lebanon, interrupted by trembling truces, endangers the precarious political balance of Syria and Iraq, the situation, for a minority as fragile as the Assyrian one, can deteriorate again. Peter BetBasoo makes it clear: "The war, for Assyrians outside the Middle East, will have the same effects as any other group. In the Middle East, there could be a direct danger from the war itself if it were to continue". The difference between communities in Europe, the US, and countries like Australia, and those resisting in their native lands is clear: "Assyrians are thriving in the diaspora. They are successful in education and business and are integrated into their host countries. In the Middle East, Assyrians are disappearing. The context remains characterized by an Islamic predominance and a second-class status". However, a nice demonstration of unity between different religions was seen in Monterrey, Mexico, last March 30th. The "Lions of Mesopotamia" were challenging Bolivia to return to the World Cup after exactly 40 years. The Iraqi national team managed to overtake the South Americans and on the pitch the Assyrian flag, represented by five players called up, was linked to the flag of Iraq. The news was picked up with great emphasis by AINA. The hope is that the expedition to the New Continent, where the Iraqis will face France, Senegal and Norway in a football-prohibitive group, could be an opportunity for brotherhood between denominations.
For the Christian communities of Syria and Iraq, fundamental help has come from Hungary, which has allocated millions of euros through the Hungary Helps Program launched in 2017 "to offer help to persecuted Christian populations in the Middle East and Africa": Hungary is, in fact, the first country in the world to raise the cause of "persecuted Christians" at the level of ministerial public policy. The range of means introduced to support these communities is very broad. We move from scholarships, such as the Scholarship Program for Christian Young People, to the publication of the Budapest Report on Christian Persecution, whose last issue dates back to 2021. A series of activities ranging from the cultural world to the charitable world and which have ramifications throughout the world. To support and coordinate the action of the Hungary Helps Program,the Hungary Helps Agency was founded in 2019, a non-profit organization directed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and C omercian. One example dates back to the devastating 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, among the first phone calls since the earthquake, called Jean-Clement Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo. Budapest, moreover, has lavishly financed the reconstruction of the village of Telskuf, mainly inhabited by members of the Assyrian Church of the East and destroyed during clashes between Kurdish peshmerga and ISIS soldiers.
Challenges And Issues
For the Assyrian communities and AINA, a central issue remains the cultural one. In particular, the diaspora has spent a lot of time preserving the language, as BetBasoo points out. He, in his online bulletin, often covered the topic: "The Assyrian language is in danger, but there are ways to preserve it. In the diaspora there are schools that teach the language. There are primary and secondary Assyrian schools in Australia. Assyrian computer engineers have developed technological supports for the language". But steps forward must be made in multiple directions: "Theological unity is neither possible nor necessary. More important is political unity for Christians. It is possible and, in many ways, already exists today". But BetBasoo specifies: "Christians typically support each other when addressing issues that affect them as a Christian group, usually related to their faith. Not always, but generally yes. However, there is no formal political unit". AINA, in this sense,does a significant job of disseminating news and updates on all Christian denominations: the Assyrians of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Catholic Chaldeans, the Syro-Chaldeans and the Syro-Orthodox.
The Role Of AINA
For AINA's 30th anniversary, BetBasoo was interviewed by journalist Abdulmesih BarAbraham and explained the reasons for the site's birth: "There was a lack of representation of Assyrians in Western media, no voice representing the Assyrian perspective. The mission has been, and always has been, to bring the Assyrian perspective to the English-speaking non-Assyrian world. For this reason AINA does not cover internal news from the Assyrian community". BetBasoo
added: "The secret to AINA's longevity is that it produces original content not found elsewhere. AINA succeeds in this by remaining true to her mission, which is to provide news about the Assyrians to the English-speaking non-Assyrian world. Furthermore, AINA has always been politically and culturally neutral. He cultivated an open environment, recruiting reporters and writers from all over the world, who trusted AINA precisely because of her neutrality". Articles that appeared on the site, in fact, were cited by numerous important English-language newspapers and its coverage of news regarding Christian communities in the Middle East is almost unparalleled. All in a totally autonomous context. So concludes BetBasoo: "Aina is independent. It is not affiliated with anyone, Assyrian or otherwise".
Inform To Preserve
AINA has chosen the path of autonomy and neutrality to increase its network and continue on the path of preserving the cultural, political and religious heritage of its reference community. Over the course of a century, Christian communities in the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, have suffered a severe demographic collapse. The lives of these people, who have often fled the geopolitical upheavals that have decimated that portion of the world for centuries, have moved elsewhere, to distant but peaceful areas: Australia, Sweden, and especially the United States. Here the diaspora has tried to keep memories of distant lands alive by demonstrating an enormous attachment to their roots. In the hyper-media world that was born at the end of the twentieth century, it was necessary to have a point of reference. This need has increased with the birth of social media, which has become a formidable vehicle for spreading news and preserving. AINA ran among the first for this role and is pursuing it at a geopolitically terrible stage.
This article was originally published in Italian and translated by Google Translate.
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