The Assyrian Democratic Organization
While other leaders enjoy the princely luxury allotted for the first time to leaders other than Saddam Hussein, Kanna seems to work hard at practicing the democracy he preaches.
Considered a medium-sized movement, ADM has all the trappings of what is considered a serious Iraqi party these days—impressive offices, a charismatic leader, a clear vision, and lots of men with AK-47s standing guard outside.
ADM is not one of the six parties, including Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and the Kurdish groups, on the steering committee that is set to establish an interim government later this month. However, the fate of Iraq one day might hinge upon parties like ADM, which might swing the country away from Islamization or authoritarianism.
A grassroots leader, who ate standing with the rest of his men Tuesday, Kanna fears the return of “fossil ideology,” the type of arcane and impracticable policies that guided many Arab states, including Iraq, toward civil and financial ruin.
Kanna, who derides the “Pan-Arabic media” as “extremist and bribed by Saddam,” paints himself as a true moderate. He believes in a secular, democratic, and constitutional Iraq, which would accept the cultures and traditions of its minorities.
Unabashedly, he envisions a peace agreement with Israel, once the issue of “Palestinian statehood is solved.” Many Arab countries, he says, “continue to invest heavily in the conflict, using it as a tool to persuade their own people. They have been too busy lining their own pockets and looking after their own interests.”
Nobody wants an American presence on Iraqi soil, adds Kanna, but he remains a steadfast supporter of an international presence in the country, “because we need the tools, the technology, and the experts to rebuild.”
It is ironic, or perhaps a symbol of what could happen in the new Iraq, that ADM has ensconced itself, and its many armed guards, in the former headquarters the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group, the regime’s main tool of repression.
Midway through the interview, Kanna notes offhandedly the two death sentences the regime meted out against him.
Isaak Ishak, the movement’s deputy secretary-general, reasons that for years Iraq sought the patronage of the communist bloc, “and the country is now much worse off than it was before Saddam. So now we will try to follow the lead of Europe and the US.”
The cooperation has already begun in earnest. Saddam’s regime often considered the Assyrians its most faithful servants. Nevertheless, it was an Assyrian employee of the regime who on April 10 alerted American intelligence officers that Saddam and his sons had entered a Mansur district restaurant.
While the bombing missed its mark, American officials nonetheless hailed it as the closest it had come to decapitating the regime. ADM, its officials make pains to note, also took part in the liberation of the key oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in the North.
Long before Arabic dominated the Middle East, the Assyrian language and Aramaic served as the region’s lingua franca. But the centuries have not treated this shrinking Christian sect kindly.
ADM began fighting Saddam in 1979. Suffering continuous losses, it moved north toward Iraqi Kurdistan in 1988 and joined the Kurdish forces fighting there to carve out a semi-autonomous safe haven.
The Assyrians claim to hail from the biblical-era nation that conquered much of what is today Israel. They claim a 7,000-year-old history in present-day Iraq. A few churches dating back to the fifth century still dot the northern countryside.
In modern times, the group, which today numbers about 1.25 million, was doubly mistreated; first by the regime and then by their Kurdish landlords.
Few locals have heard of ADM, and it appears doubtful that it will be able to garner enough votes to influence Iraq’s future when the country goes to a referendum later this month. The balance of power is heavily tilted toward Shi’ite groups, many of them radical.
While they cling to a semblance of tolerance, proffering a future democracy and multi-party system, there could be cause for suspicion among the burgeoning Shi’ite groups.
During a visit to the Diyala Governorate, a stronghold of the Iran-backed and funded Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, its local leader, Abu Muslim al-Jaffari, offered Iran as a model for a “democratic state,” arguing intensely for over an hour that minorities enjoyed rights and even some power there.
Responding to reports that as many as 700 of the party’s Badr Brigades militia flooded Diyala, he vowed that none had entered any part of Iraq. “No one here is armed. We are politicians and civil servants only,” he said.
But merchants hawking vegetables, AK-47s, and pistols lined Diyala’s capital of Ba’aquba. When Jaffari’s interview with The Jerusalem Post ended, he accompanied me to the large lobby of the former governor’s office, now commandeered by SCIRI.
Several of his men were fiddling with an AK-47. They were dressed in fatigues, and like mischievous schoolboys self-consciously tried to hide the gun behind their backs.
Al-Dawa, the most veteran of the Shi’ite political groups, which struggled against and suffered bitterly at the hands of the regime, also promises democracy. But Iraq must be Islamic, argues an eloquent Abdul Karim al-Anzi, the group’s Baghdad leader. He refused to say that he desires a state with “constitutional Islamic laws.”
When probed on what action he would take to limit the hundreds of vendors selling alcohol in Baghdad’s streets, he replied, “We would have to persuade them against it.”
Back at the partially destroyed Fedayeen headquarters, Kanna concluded: “There is still some of the virus that was Saddam in this region, still extremism and frankly, we need some help to save us from that fate.”
