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2023-02-28 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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ISIS 2015 attack on Syria’s Khabur Assyrians casts long shadow
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[NPASyria] February 23 marked the eighth anniversary of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) 2015 attack against the Assyrian Christians of Tel Tamr, west of the city of Hasakah, in northeast Syrian.
| Prior to the Syrian War, the town of Tel Tamr, Hasakah and the Khabur villages were home to around 17.000 Assyrians. Today, Tel Tamr and the surrounding Khabur villages are home to less than 1,500 Assyrian. |
In the early morning hours, ISIS fighters descended from Mount Abdul’aziz (Kurdish: Kezwan) on the Assyrian villages located on the southern banks of the Khabur River. The attack came mere months after ISIS genocide against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi ethno-religious community in Sinjar (Shengal), northern Iraq.
Continued from Page 4
Millennia ago, the Assyrian empire stretched across Mesopotamia; its fighters were feared across the region. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
the last century of the Assyrian people’s history has been marked by persecution and migration.
The Assyrians living in Tel Tamr originally hail from the Hakkari region (The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
 ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund...
). During the World War II, they escaped persecution to Iraq. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
in the aftermath of the Simele Massacre carried out by the Iraqi army in the summer of 1933, large masses of Assyrians fled to the Syrian Jazira (North and East), which at the time was administrated by the French Mandatory authorities.
The Simele massacre was a collective punishment meted out by the Iraqi government against this Christian minority. The nearly 800 Assyrians killed there are remembered every year during Assyrian Martyrs’ Day.
Embracing Christianity in the first and second centuries BC, Assyrians follow the Church of the East. Its cultural center was located in the village of Qudshanis in Hakkari. In the west of Hasakah, the Assyrians settled in 33 villages on either banks of the Khabur River.
During the Syrian War, beginning in 2011, the Assyrians soon found themselves vulnerable and surrounded, as Islamist groups poured into Syria and Iraq. By 2015, ISIS was in control of large swathes of Syrian territory, including east, south and west of Hasakah.
The massacre of Feb. 23 was part of a frontal attack by ISIS, extending from the west of the city of Hasakah up to administrative borders of the city of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) further west. The Assyrian forces of Nattoreh, the Syriac Military Council and the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) could not withhold the attack. The front was pierced.
Only the Khabur River stood firm. Its turbulent waters prevented many Assyrians from safely crossing to the other bank of the river. The attack resulted in the abduction of 253 Assyrian people — mostly women, children and the elderly. It was the first time the community had experienced such violence since they settled in Syria in 1933.
The attack shattered and dispersed the Assyrian community. Following the ISIS campaign, the vast majority of the population fled to the cities of Hasakah or Qamishli. Eleven churches were either partially or wholly destroyed by the jihadi bad boys. Nine people were killed defending their homes.
Although Tel Tamr and the Khabur Valley were later liberated from ISIS tyranny, few Assyrians have returned.
Jamila Kako, along with her mother, sisters, mother-in-law, husband, and son, were all kidnapped in the night. Based on ISIS ideology, women were separated from men after they were kidnapped.
Jamila, as well as 252 other Assyrians, were taken to Mount Abdul’aziz, where the group had established its headquarters at Maghlouja — since then the site of Assyrians’ famous annual festivals. Two hours later, the ’hostages’ were taken deeper into ISIS territory, to the city of Shaddadi.
In Shaddadi, Jamila says she was introduced to three Yazidi women from Sinjar kidnapped by the group. This unlikely meeting of disparate Mesopotamian religious minorities did not last long. In Shaddadi, ISIS operated a slave market where Yazidi girls and women were sold into sexual slavery.
Prior to the Syrian War, the town of Tel Tamr, Hasakah and the Khabur villages were home to around 17.000 Assyrians. By the time ISIS attacked the region, that number had been reduced to nearly 12.000.
On a WhatsApp call with North Press, Jamila said, "from Shaddadi we were taken [on October 6] to Raqqa," the de-facto capital of the Islamic State.
ISIS released the Assyrians it had kidnapped in batches, as they were being freed in return for large ransom payments. How much money actually changed hands remains a secret to this day. Jamila Kako was set free on Dec. 25, 2015. The Assyrian bishop Mar Afram Athneil had adopted the case of his flock and assured their release. The freed ’hostages’ were put on a bus to Hasakah.
The last batch of Assyrian abductees arrived in Hasakah on Feb. 22, 2016. By the end of March 2016, all abductees were set free except for Asur Perwer Rastam, Abdul-masih Azraya Noya, and Bassam Michel Issa, who had been killed by a firing squad in Sept. 2015. ISIS had wanted to send a message that, if ransoms were not paid, the remaining Assyrians would face a similar fate.
The years between 2014 and 2016 marked the culmination of the Christian (and Assyrian) exodus from Syria and Iraq. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
it was not the end of the story.
In the aftermath of Turkey’s ’Operation Peace Spring’, which invaded and occupied the cities of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad in October 2019, a large number of Sere Kaniye residents were relocated to the Assyrian villages on the Khabur. Not only this, a number of Assyrian villages, being now on the frontline between Ottoman Turkish-occupied territory and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have been repeatedly bombarded by Ottoman Turkish forces and the factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA). It has added yet and additional burden to the Assyrian people.
Today, Kako serves as an administrator in the Assyrian Martyrs’ Families Council, which was founded in 2016. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
the perpetrators of the Assyrian genocide remain on the lam; justice has yet to be done. "Eight years since the attack, the Assyrian plight still remains unaddressed. Criminals should be brought to justice and prosecuted for the crimes they committed," Kako told North Press.
Today, Tel Tamr and the surrounding Khabur villages are home to less than 1,500 Assyrian. "We need protection, security and safety," Jamila Kako pleaded.
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Posted by trailing wife 2023-02-28 06:00||
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