American Mesopotamian Organization Calls on the International Community to Establish a Protected Region in the Nineveh Plain in Northern Iraq
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) June 25, 2014 -- The immediate and sudden collapse of several units of the Iraqi military stationed in the Ninawa Province and the widespread desertion among its rank and file when confronted with only a few hundred terrorists from ISIS lead us to believe that this was a well-planned operation by governments in the region that oppose Maliki’s rule with the help from forces within Iraq.
American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO) is also of the opinion that several parties with conflicting agendas came together briefly for one reason, which is to dismantle the State of Iraq in order to serve their own agendas - former Baa’thists now wearing an “Islamic veil” to regain power and topple the government in Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to use the failure of the State of Iraq as an excuse to declare independence and last, but not least, ISIL/ISIS terrorists to kill, rape, pillage and perhaps be able to carve out a Wahabi Caliphate in Sunni areas of Syria and Iraq.
In the past eleven years since the removal of Saddam’s regime, the Assyrian (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) Christians, also the indigenous people of Iraq, have been targeted by Sunni and Shiite militias, alike, in Basra, Baghdad, Mosul and other major Iraqi cities, where generations of Assyrians have made significant contributions to building Iraq. Over half of their population fled the country to neighboring Syria, Jordan and Lebanon awaiting visas to migrate to Europe, Canada, Australia and the U.S. Those who remained in Iraq continue to suffer at the hands of a Sectarian government in Baghdad that treats them as Christian expatriates and a Kurdish nationalist Regional government that wants to completely strip them of their Assyrian ethnic identity while promoting a new fictional identity, “Christian Kurdistanis.”
Earlier this year, the Iraqi cabinet approved in principle the formation of several new provinces, one being the Nineveh Plain Province with ties to the Federal government in Baghdad. And while AMO welcomed this gesture and considered it a step in the right direction, the recent developments on the ground in Iraq and the occupation of the Nineveh Plain Region by Kurdish militias, the organization is less confident that such a plan will come to fruition. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) intends to annex the Nineveh Plain area currently part of the Ninawa Province and by doing so it would have achieved four main objectives 1) Its militias would be a stone's throw away from the oil fields in Mosul 2) Gain control over the large proven deposits of natural gas and crude oil in the Nineveh Plain region. 3) Complete the annexation of what’s left of the Assyrian ancestral homeland. 4) Present the future Kurdish State as a multi-ethnic, multi religious, pluralistic society deserving to take its place among the civilized nations of the world.
While AMO believes in a United, Democratic and Federal Iraq, it's confident the Federal government in Baghdad regardless of who is leading it will not be able to guarantee the security of the most vulnerable groups of its citizens and these being mainly the Assyrian Christians, Shabaks and the Yazidis living in the Nineveh Plain Region. Therefore AMO calls on the international community, mainly the Unites States, European Union, Russia and China to declare the Nineveh Plain Province as a protected region for the ethno-religious groups living there and to begin the establishment of a security force drawn from the residents of that territory. AMO also demands the removal of Kurdish militias from the area and reminds the Kurdish Regional Government that the mineral wealth of the Nineveh Plain Province belongs to its residents and as an occupying force AMO holds them responsible for any theft of these resources.
American Mesopotamian Organization also reminds the international community of their moral obligation towards the vulnerable minorities in Northern Iraq and if they feel in any way “embarrassed” or “awkward” coming to the aid of “fellow Christians,” AMO would like to point out that Shabaks and Yazidis are not Christians and just like they felt they had the moral obligations to protect vulnerable Muslim Kurds, Bosnians and Albanians of Kosovo, they are expected to apply the same set of morals to protect Christians, Yazidis and Muslims of the Nineveh Plain.
American Mesopotamian Organization also calls on the diaspora Assyrians to rally behind the idea of the establishment of a protected region in the Nineveh Plain Province and to lobby their governments to support the proposal.
American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO) is a Grassroots/Political Organization founded to influence and guide US policy on matters of interest to the Assyrian American community.
David William Lazar, American Mesopotamian Organization, http://www.americanmesopotamian.org, +1 661-220-0372, [email protected]
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