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Assyrians in Iraq or Iraqi Assyrians, are an ethnoreligious and linguistic minority in present-day Iraq. Assyrians in Iraq are those Assyrians still residing in the country of Iraq. They are (along with the Iraqi Arabs, Mandeans and Iraqi Jews) the indigenous people of Iraq, descending from the ancient Mesopotamians, in particular from the Akkadian peoples (Assyrians and Babylonians) and the Aramean tribes who intermingled with them from the 10th century BC onwards. Assyria existed as an independent state and sometimes empire in what is today Iraq from the 23rd century BC to the end of the 7th century BC, and then as an occupied but named entity (''Athura'', Asuristan, Assyria, Adiabene) until the late 7th century AD. Assyrians are a Semitic people who speak evolutions of the ancient eastern Aramaic dialects that have existed in Iraq since 1200 BC, and follow Eastern Christianity which first appeared in the region in the 1st century AD, in particular the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church and Ancient Church of the East. The vast majority of Iraqi Christians are ethnic Assyrians. According to the CIA, the Christians of Iraq or other religions (excluding Islam), including the Assyrian community, make up 3% of the Iraqi population.〔CIA Factbook: "Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%, Turkoman, Assyrian, or other 5% () Christian or other 3%" ()〕 The last Iraqi census, in 1987, counted 1.4 million Christians, including the Assyrian community, although many left the country during the 1990s when economic sanctions were imposed on the country. Other indigenous Assyrian communities can be found just outside Iraq's borders in "southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria".〔(Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century By Sargon Donabed )〕 ==British Mandate== In 1918, Britain resettled 20,000 Assyrian people from Turkey in Iraqi refugee camps in Baquba and Mandan after the Ottoman Empire instigated the Assyrian Genocide and subsequently violently quelled a British and Russian-inspired Assyrian rebellion (see Assyrian struggle for independence), which although having success initially, floundered when the Russians withdrew from the war, leaving the Assyrian forces cut off and vastly outnumbered without supplies and armaments. From there, due to their higher level of education, many gravitated toward Kirkuk and Habbaniya, (as well as to areas in the north with age old existing indigenous Assyrian populations) where they were indispensable in the administration of the oil and military projects. As a result, approximately three-fourths of the Assyrians who had sided with the British during World War I found themselves living in now Kurdish dominated areas of Iraq where their ancestors had existed for many thousands of years. Thousands of Assyrian men had seen service in the ''Iraqi Levies'' (Assyrian Levies), a force under British officers separate from the regular Iraqi army. Excellent, disciplined and loyal soldiers, they were used by the British to help put down Arab and Kurdish insurrections against the British, and to help patrol the borders of British Mesopotamia. Pro-British, they had been apprehensive of Iraqi independence. Most of those thus resettled by the British have gone into exile, although by the end of the twentieth century, almost all of those who remain were born in Iraq. Assyrians living in northern Iraq today are those whose ancestry lies in the north originally, an area roughly corresponding with ''Ancient Assyria''. Many of these, however, in places like Berwari, have been displaced by Kurds since World War I. This process has continued throughout the twentieth century: as Kurds have expanded in population, Assyrians have come under attack as in 1933 (Simele Massacre), and as a result have fled from Iraq. (Stafford, ''Tragedy of the Assyrians'', 1935) Unlike the Kurds, some Assyrians scarcely expected a nation-state of their own after World War I (despite promises by the British and Russians), but they did demand restitution from Turkey for the material and population losses they had suffered, especially in northwest Iran, a neutral party in WWI invaded by Turkish forces. Their pressure for some temporal authority in the north of Iraq under the Assyrian patriarch, the Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, was flatly refused by British and Iraqis alike. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Assyrians in Iraq」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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