LEAGUE PROPOSAL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 254, 24 September 1935, Page 7

LEAGUE PROPOSAL

SETTLEMENT OF ASSYRIANS. FROM IRAQ TO SYRIA. BRITISH SYMPATHY. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph. —Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 21. The Budgetary Committee of the League Assembly at Geneva yesterday agreed to send to the Supervisory Committee for examination a proposal to provide 1,300,900 Swiss francs for the settlement of the Assyrians of Iraq in Syria. The British member strongly supported the resolution and recalled the offer of the British Government to make an additional contribution of £250,000 provided a satisfactory scheme is worked out and sufficient other ‘support is assured.

ASSYRIAN EXODUS. IRAQ TO THE ORONTES. - A DISTRUSTFUL PEOPLE.* A correspondent of the London Times writes:— The latest phase in the history of the Assyrians—they number 35,000 — is the departure from northern Iraq to the Khabur River district in Syria of those members of the community who feel that humiliating conditions of life in the Mosul province are to be improved upon in the neighbouring mandatory State. Whether or not this new Syrian settlement scheme, generally regarded as final, will be affected in any way by the Assyrians still forming a Christian minority in a Moslem country, the French have promised to see that they have every opportunity of making a fresh start. First the3 T will be disarmed. Then, after a probationary period, it is the intention of the Frencli to move them from the Khabur district to the infinitely more fertile Orontes Valley, close to the seaboard in north-west Syria. Here, it is hoped, they will settle down to the agricultural life which, as herdsmen and cultivators of grain, they pursued before the War. If it were not for the religious difficulty it would seem that the Assyrian question might be settled by this scattering of a people over the Middle East and by their losing coherence and racial unity. For, in effect, this is wliat is probably happening; and the emigrants, who are now being transferred in parties, roughly 200 at a time, will be absorbed, socially and economically, into the life of their adoptive country. The encouragement of this disintegrating process may be considered harsh, but it is the logical outcome of those disrupting forces which have been at work among the Assyrians and which, without a reconciliation of the Mar Shimun, the chief of the race, with an unsympathetic and opposing element among his people, can only be follewed by further dissension. AFTER. THE WAR.

Because of the loss of their homelands the Assyrians were forced after the War to find new surroundings. Conditions at the time, more favourable to individualist enterprise than now, enabled some to go to the United States, where they have been known to make large fortunes. Some of the women found domestic jobs among the British population, while their husbands were employed as moter drivers. The bulk, though, of the able-bodied men joined the Iraq Levies, a semimilitary gendarmerie which was gradually build tip mainly of Assyrian units until, in 1922, it consisted of two infantry battalions, two cavalry squadrons, and one pack battery. The wisdom of recruiting this force from a Christain minority which was enjoying hospitality in a Moslem country seems doubtful now in the light of recent atrocities. At the time it seemed a sound move. The Assyrians had small sympathy for the Mesopotamian Arab, then openly hostile to the British. They proved themselves fine soldiers, as fierce as they showed themselves sensitive in Kirkuk when, in 1924, after a coffee-shop brawl in which several Assyrians were annoyed, riot broke out and 100 townspeople were killed by these paid Levies. But at that time the taxpayer had grown tried of maintaining the British forces in Iraq. It was therefore thought convenient to have this force of less expensive Assyrians, who benefited by their service to the extent of being able to raise the standard of living of their families beyond anything which their frugal means in the Hakkiari highlands had allowed. So some 10,000 Assyrians were trained under British officers, many of whom look back with affection on these splendid soldiers. SPECIAL OBLIGATION. It is because of this service given by the Assyrian Levies, none of whom believed that Great Britain would surrender the mandate of Iraq in their lifetime, that competent officials take tire view that Britain has an obligation to them in working out a satisfactory settlement. As a force of gendarmerie they have never been popular in Iraq, only escaping the stigma of “blackleg” because they were Christians, and so, to the Arab mind, a natural ally of the British. It may be doubted then that such atrocities as occurred two years ago, when in the Dohuk district and at Simmel, in north Iraq, some 600 Assyrians were wiped out by Iraqi machine-gun fire, would have happened if, instead of turning them into soldiers, they had been settled on the land as soon after the War as was possible. So, more particularly if we were premature, in discarding our mandatory duties, there is; as Lord Cecil has pointed out, a special obligation to assist financially the 10,000 Assyrians who will ultimately be settled at a cost of perhaps £300,000 in Syria. At the same time the Assyrians are not to be thought of as suffering undue physical distress and misery. The really distressing development is in the attitude of mind which a . long series of misfortunes has conditioned in this people. They are cynical and unbelieving to the iast degree—and small wonder. First they are told they are to be settled on the estates of a great company in southern Brazil, but it leaks out that Brazilian politicians think these warlike Asiatics will be used as a cat’s-paw—with claws showing—by unscrupulous opponents. Then they . hear of the scheme for them to colonise the Rupununi area of British Guiana, dropped for numerous reasons. THE MAR SHIMUN.

It was largely the supporters of the Mar Shimun, perhaps 15.000, who favoured emigration, since they identified themselves with their chief’s claim for both spiritual and “temporal” power and its natural corollary —an autonomous Assyrian State. But the Mar Shimun liad been hurried away to Cyprus, just as on previous troublous occasions his subjects had been flown hither and thither by a solicitous R.A.F. And, in view of his claims and the unrest they are liabie

to incur among all concerned, it is considered as well that the Mar Shimun and his Patriarchal family should stay in that island, where they are quite unable to influence their Iraqi, people or those moving into Syria with any kind of racial propaganda. Yet the fact remains that the original emigration was to be conducted bv the Mar Shimun, who, it seems obvious, cannot be allowed to attempt to impose his “temporal” claims on the French mandate of Syria and must, therefore, be kept in virtual exile. This may considerably diminish the numbers finally leaving Iraqv