WITHOUT CHALDEANS,
IRAQ LACKS ITS HISTORIC SELF
by: Bishop Sarhad Yawsip Jammo
The damage
done to the foundations of Iraq in the past few years has shaken its basic
fabric. Never in recorded memory have religious sects or ethnic factions
exercised such brutality toward each other on such a large and comprehensive
scale. Christians, of Chaldean majority, have had to suffer the heaviest and
most drastic losses, ending up in mass exodus from their ancestral land. This is
a humanitarian and cultural tragedy for the whole civilized world, but it is,
most of all, an Iraqi self-destructive act.
The Shiite faction, a preponderant
majority of the actual population, as a major Moslem sect and as belonging to
the Arabic culture, can claim historic roots in Mesopotamia since the Moslem
Conquest in the middle of the 7th Century; nevertheless, the Shiites
preserve strong and interwoven religious, cultural, and social, ties to Iran,
and obey devoutly Iranian Imams. While they are the heaviest segment of Iraq and
the dominant leadership of its present forces, they need to be integrated with
other segments of the Iraqi composite to be able to reflect and represent
adequately the culture and collective agenda of this Land of the Twin Rivers and
its state.
The Sunni faction, as being Arabic
and Moslem, could claim similarly the Iraqi identity beginning from the Islamic
Conquest, and could as well claim a genuine Iraqi allegiance, but the Iraqi
Sunni, with the Arab Shiite, assert nevertheless their belonging to a larger
Arabic nation that dilutes regional particularities and loyalties, and
super-imposes on them a higher allegiance to a prospected Pan Arabic nation and
homeland. Therefore, neither Sunni nor Shiite, with their factual dependencies,
can claim historic and cultural continuity with ancient Iraq, or contain their
national allegiance to the Iraqi state.
Kurds, within Iraq and outside
Iraq, have a different story and different dialectic. As far as our subject is
concerned, they are a fundamental and integral segment of the Iraqi population
and state, but, as a distinct culture and religion, they cannot express the
Mesopotamian historic core-identity and its continuity with itself; similar
assessment could be made about the other ethnic, cultural, and religious
segments of the Iraqi population, though all of them are integral and relevant
parts of the Iraqi rainbow.
The Christians of Iraq, mainly the Chaldeans,
through their living Aramaic culture, authentic scriptural heritage and
apostolic Christianity, can legitimately and rightfully claim to maintain and
preserve the unique Mesopotamian features of identity. Babylon is their
principal historic reference, and all of Iraq--mountain and valley, north and
south, before Christ and after Christ, before Islam and after Islam--is their
ancestral land, to which they give their undivided love, as they have shown
generation after generation; Chaldeans are truly the best expression of the
historic core of Iraq. How sad it is that the actual leaders of contemporary
Iraq are not using this their best asset, in order to establish a balanced and
genuine Iraqi road map for its cohesiveness and its successful future.
