'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎213r] (430/862)

MODERN IRAQ 313
1930, despite many difficulties over land ownership, all but 350
families had been settled as tenants in various localities of the Erbil
and Mosul provinces, half on State lands and half on lands privately
owned. Leases were reasonable, and the Iraqi Government was
helpful in granting tax remissions until the settlements were well
established. A scheme for settling the remaining Assyrians in the
Baradost country was only held up by Shaikh Ahmad’s rebellion
(pp. 309-10). Land settlement itself was a fair success; the Assyrians
proved good cultivators and peaceful neighbours, and were generally
popular with their Kurdish landlords, though a small percentage
made trouble and refused to pay taxes.
The Assyrians, however, were not content to be quietly settled in
scattered villages. A large number had enlisted in the Levies and
formed two of the smartest battalions. Becoming the favourites of
their officers and the proteges of the British generally, they tended
to assume an attitude of superiority towards the Arab and Kurdish
inhabitants of Iraq, and identified themselves with the British as the
conquering people. Such an attitude from mountaineering Christian
tribesmen was intolerable to the Arab Moslem plainsmen, and also
to the Kurds, who regarded the Assyrians simply as fellow brigands
who were no better than themselves. Assyrian pride was increased
by the unwonted prosperity which they enjoyed through employ
ment in the Levies, on the Iraqi railways, and on the pipe-line.
There were distressing incidents such as the Assyrian mutiny of 1924,
when two companies of Levies ran amok in Kirkuk after a private
quarrel and killed 50 Moslems, without any Assyrian being punished
with death. The independent attitude affected a great part of the
Assyrian colony which, under its young and inexperienced leader,
the Mar Shimun, began to formulate nationalistic ideals. A common
demand was for settlement in a compact block of territory and the
grant of at least such rights of communal self-government as they had
formerly enjoyed under the millet system of the Turkish Empire.
By 1930 the former was certainly impossible without expropriation
of existing landholders, and the latter was not only contrary to the
general interests of the Iraqi Government, which aimed at making
citizens of all its subjects, but would have been grossly unfair to the
Kurds, who were given a good deal less than communal rights. It
was also apparent that many of the Assyrian peasants were not
anxious for such increases in the power of the Mar Shimun or of their
tribal chiefs as the millet system would have made possible.
The termination of the mandate alarmed the Assyrians, who feared