Before beginning with the details of the tragedy and heinous crime which was committed by some criminal terrorists from the Ikmala Kurdish village when they murdered a young shepherd Akhiqar Giwargis Audisho from the village of Gondkosa, it's very useful to address the matter of the origin of Kurds, and the history of their presence in northern Iraq or in Mesopotamia. Researchers and historians have disagreed about the roots and historical origins of this people but a recent study published by the Babylon d'Nineveh Institute for Historical Studies, researcher Dr. Ghazi Abdul Ghafur published a study which is the closest for acceptance amongst all other scientific theories and studies. This research indicates that the Kurds most likely belonged to the Bingra or Bingras tribes, a word meaning gipsy in the Indian Sanskrit language. These tribes were scattered in the Indian desert of Rajastan and spoke the Marwari which has great similarities with the Kurdish language. The Bingra tribes were Aryans and they used to move from one place to another looking for their livelihood, many of them had moved to Persia and settled in Iran. Upon the Mongol invasion to Baghdad in 1258, Hulagu brought a group of those gipsy tribes and settled them in the north of Iraq and Turkey after they took Islam as a religion. Hulagu as well as the Ottomans recruited the Kurds to kill and expel the Assyrian and Armenian Christians (the infidels!!!) from their prosperous homelands where the Kurds committed horrible, barbaric massacres bringing about the Ottoman policy of Islamizing the region. As for the word Kurdish, it has a story in history which we won't mention for its ugliness, but we say to those who want to kurdify us that it's not an honor and we are in no need for such a lineage. Our pride and honor is that we are the proud inheritors of the Assyrian, Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations, where the world bows before their accomplishments and advancement in all fields of science and learning.

It's certain that not all Kurds belong to the aforementioned origins but there are indigenous Assyrians, Armenians, and Jews (the Dhemmis) who were forced to become Muslims and became Kurdish as a result of mounting pressure and heavy taxes which were imposed on them by the Ottoman and Islamic states; it was for them a manner of avoiding the massacres which they were exposed to every now and then, but many of them have adopted the customs and traditions of these gipsy tribes of betrayal and treachery even towards their closest friends and relatives, that's what took place in many Iraqi cities as Arabism entered Iraq with Islam and the tribe Khazraj was one of the first Arab tribes which settled in Iraq during the rule of Caliph Omar bin al- Khattab when this tribe was sent to Iraq in order to resolve a 40 years old dispute between the Aws and Khazraj tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.

Many Arabs admit to their Assyrian, Sumerian, and Akkadian roots and even those who don't acknowledge their origins still recognize the Assyrians as the ancient forefathers of the Arabs, unlike the Kurds, who want to move in the opposite direction of history and irrefutable evidence when they accuse the Assyrians of being the "occupiers" of the so-called (Kurdistan), when this word didn't exist before the Mongol arrival to the land of Assyria (Ashur) and because the region was vast and the Kurds were less in numbers there, hence they were not able to kurdify the land all at once because that required a long time thus they took advantage of any possible opportunity to spread their domination and annex what lands they could to the so-called (Kurdistan). As an example, in the 1947 census there's no mention of any Kurd in the district of Dohuk (Nohadra) when it was inhabited by the Assyrians and remnants of the exiled Jews. Today the Kurds boast that Dohuk (Nohadra) is Kurdish as they want to annex the villages of the Nineveh Plain to their so-called (Kurdistan) and if it's left up to them they're dreaming of having their borders up to the Mount of Hemreen.

No one knows the betrayal and treachery of the Kurds as the Assyrian people do because there are countless true stories in this regard. For example, there was an Assyrian who befriended a Kurd and they both developed a brotherly relationship and wouldn't do any thing whether good or bad if they were not together. One day the Assyrian was walking while the Kurd walked behind him, when the Kurd said:" I want you my friend to walk behind me and not before me". The Assyrian was surprised at the request:" why my friend"? The Kurd responded:" You know my friend we've been together for a long time during which I never lied to you but recently whenever I see you walking before me I have feelings of killing you and indeed many a time I proceeded to take my dagger in order to kill you but some how I was able to control myself, so I beg you not to walk before me because I feel that I will betray our friendship one of these days and I will kill you" That was the end of that friendship.

There isn't an Assyrian village which hasn't experienced the Kurdish betrayal and it's rare to find an Assyrian who hasn't been betrayed by the Kurds, that's why the Assyrians have a famous and well known proverb which has been known from father to son:" If a Kurd becomes a piece of gold don't place it in your pocket".

The Kurds as individuals, groups and leaders have proved that they carry the germ of treason and betrayal in their blood, isn't it enough of a proof the killing of the martyr Patriarch Mar Shimon Benyamin in 1918 in Kunashahr, Iran at the hands of the criminal Simko al-Shikaki in the latter's home when the Patriarch was there to talk about an agreement..

Then the killings of both the martyr Francis Yusuf Shabo who was a member in the Kurdish parliament and that of the fighter Lazar (Abu Nassir) and their killer was given the right to belong to the Barzani clan in order to protect him from being exposed for his many crimes.

Have we forgotten what they did to the shepherd Edward Khoshaba when they dragged him out of jail to kill him in the most savage way with the consent of the senior officials or when they threw the body of Helen Sawa to the dogs after she was raped by a senior official in the political bureau of Barzani's party.

There's no doubt also that they were behind the killing of Fransu Hariri who was a member of their leadership, otherwise where is the murderer who was supposedly arrested and they mentioned that he belonged to the Islamic movement?

The Iraqi opposition had also experienced their betrayal in 1996, when the Iraqi army was sent to the city of Arbil to chase out the Talabani group following an agreement between Barzani and Saddam, and the price was the heads of the opponents in the Arab parties. Today all of Iraq is living their betrayal, treachery, and deceit feeling the brunt of it all. The homeland has become a cheap commodity to buy and sell in international markets.

However, not to dwell on the near and not so distant past; let us talk about the present and how events developed resulting in the horrific crime which lead to the killing of Akhiqar Giwargis Audisho who was born in 1965, married with three daughters.

The Kurdish greed for the lands of the Gondkosa village is an old one because of its rich and fertile soil with an abundance of water, this greed in particular is that of the Kurds in the neighboring Ikmala Kurdish village who have some agricultural fields but they are not allowed into the pastures because they are not residents of Gondkosa, however, after the uprising of March 1991, the Kurdish trespassing on Gondkosa's lands increased resulting in many clashes during the past few years between the people of the two villages, however, the local authorities didn't solve the problem in order to deter the trespassing Kurds but rather kept the conflict going even though the villagers of Gondkosa presented several complaints to the local authorities beginning with the department of agriculture in Mangish and Dohuk (Nohadra) passing through the Governor of Dohuk (Nohadra), the ministry of agriculture, the parliament, the Kurdish and Assyrian political parties, Sarkis Aghajan, then Massoud and Nechirvan Barzani, but not one of them was able to put an end to the Kurdish greed and in less than a year the Kurdish transgressions from the Ikmala village increased and turned into challenges and attacks with the help of one called Abdul Rahman the director of agriculture in Mangish. The Kurds bombed a water pump which was the property of a farmer called William Khoshaba, and then another water pump was sabotaged followed by throwing some irrigation pipes into the river while the authorities didn't take any action.

A week before the crime two peasants Oshana and Nissan were surprised to discover an area of five Donums of red melons burned completely due to the use of a pesticide which exterminates all sorts of vegetation, and even though They complained but the authorities claimed that the suspects swore on the Koran that they weren't the culprits so they were cleared. ((Yes, the Kurds have their own "Koran verses" aside from all other Muslims. One says:" maleh fala halaleh" which means the usurpation of Christian property is Halal (permitted). The other one says:" bkosheh fala dijta bhashteh" which means kill a Christian and you will go to paradise. The latter phrase was repeated until recently during Friday prayers in Kurdish mosques and even though today they have less faith in that phrase but they still apply it; that's how they have been able to establish an area for themselves at the expense of our Assyrian name and history))

The suspects were released in spite of the repeated threats which they uttered in the presence of the Kurdish officials in Mangish that there would be dire consequences if their wishes of getting the land in Gondkosa weren't met. On the night of the horrific crime Tuesday 08-08, 2006 many of the village's young men were present at the center of the Dohuk (Nohadra) governorate, where they had contacted Giwargis the Deputy governor, who is also a church deacon and a lawyer in the hopes that he would be able to solve their problem with the greedy Kurds from the Ikmala village but unfortunately he was unable to do any thing because his duties are limited to the propaganda of showing the world that the Kurds are "good with our people" and to say there's an Assyrian Deputy governor, this is what all other ministers and parliamentarians do, in addition to our parties which are helpless and their duty is nothing more than polishing the image of the Kurds claiming (brotherhood with the Kurds) or (the democratic experiment!).

The killer Chirdel Tahir Khalid and his two friends who were in a car took advantage of the absence of the village's young men in order to ambush the martyr Akhiqar Giwargis Audisho shooting him with a Kalashnikov rifle, one bullet hit him in his chest and another hit his rifle causing it to malfunction so he wasn't able to shoot back. The murder happened around 7:30 p.m. while the victim was tending to his sheep, another shepherd saw what happened and hurried to the scene of the crime which forced the killers to leave their car and escape on foot towards the orchards in the north side of the village because they couldn't take their car any more since the road passes through the village. The villagers went out to see what happened as they heard gun shots, they heard the shepherd calling for help saying that Akhiqar was killed, the villagers brought a car and promptly transported the victim to the Dohuk (Nohadra) hospital where he was still conscious and talking about the killers and how he wasn't able to use his rifle. At the Ikmala village, where the car had to pass, an ambush made up of the killer's uncle and two of his cousins stopped the car; they wanted to finish off Akhiqar thinking that his killer was killed but when they learned that he had escaped to the northern parts of the village they let the car pass. This clearly proves that the crime was premeditated and it wasn't a coincidence. The victim was admitted to the emergency ward at the hospital and was entered to the operations room at 12:00 midnight when his situation worsened and he passed away at 3:00 a.m. due to heart and lung injuries.

The authorities had sent police forces to the two villages and they detained the villagers of Gondkosa preventing them from leaving the village in order to contain the events, and the first thing that the police did in the interest of the killer was to remove his car from the crime scene as soon as they arrived, then they began their investigation trying to show the issue as a personal one not related to Kurdish transgression on our Assyrian villages. Thus the pedants, opportunists and Kurdish authorities began to spread the news that the issue was a personal animosity between the murderer and the victim, so let's ask one question only why the existing conflict wasn't solved during the past 15 years of Kurdish rule?

It's worthy to mention that the continuous Kurdish transgressions on our Assyrian villages are countless thus Gondkosa wasn't the first but also Mangish was a scene of such Kurdish violations. Two thirds of the village is occupied by the Kurds while only one third of the land in the north corner of the village remains for its original inhabitants and even in this part there are around 30 more Kurdish houses. In the mid 1970's some neighboring Kurdish homes belonging to Jaafar Bisvki were deported so he visited Bishop Hanna Qalu and asked him to allow those deportees to live in the empty houses where the owners were either working in Baghdad, in other cities or were living outside of Iraq. The Bishop agreed thinking of it as an act of charity, however, even though their villages were re-built but those Kurds refused to leave the district of Mangish and insisted on staying. Then the campaign of Sarkis Aghajan included the re-building of Mangish so the inhabitants decided to demolish and re-build their homes in order to clear out the remaining third of this inveterate Assyrian area of Kurdish settlers.

The Kurds were not satisfied with robbing the two thirds of the village, but also insisted on remaining in it and when the village's inhabitants refused that, the Kurds turned to their usual ways of threatening and intimidation, so some 20 armed tribal Kurds arrested Paulus an engineer of Mangish and he was literally told: "You will be killed if you don't build us new homes as the building campaign is going on".

The engineer went to complain at the Dohuk (Nohadra) governorate but the local authorities didn't take any legal procedures because they never do if the trespasser or the offender is a Kurd!! When we complain all we hear is sweet talk which doesn't prevent nor comforts.

This is the Kurdish government and this is how we're living.

We wonder what will happen to us in the future if they were to be independent of Iraq and declare (their state!!?)

It's certain that our situation wouldn't be any better than it is today, then let's hurry to unite and work together asking for our rights and for a secure region to protect ourselves and our children from murder, extortion, and terrorism which is haunting us even in the so-called secure areas.

By Majed Eshoo
www.ana-ashur.com