KRI PM Masrour Barzani met with an Assyrian and Chaldean delegation in Washington. Here’s what to know.
The KRI prime minister made the stop on a visit to the US capital this month, meeting with a self-organized delegation of members from across the country’s Assyrian and Chaldean community.
Yasmeen Altaji | Mar. 7, 2024 | Cover photo/Facebook via Masrour Barzani
Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) prime minster Masrour Barzani met with a group of Assyrian and Chaldean community members in Washington, D.C. during his visit to the U.S. capital.
Barzani’s visit to the US — and meetings with various former and current officials — signals a living interest in US-KRI relations as tensions in the region flare and Iraq moves to eliminate U.S. military presence in the country. His meeting with Assyrian community members comes after Iraq’s federal ruling against minority quota seats — including those designated for Assyrians — in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament.
Sam Darmo, an Arizona-based real estate agent who chairs the Assyrian American Coalition of the Arizona Republican Party and founded the advocacy group Assyrians For Justice, led the delegation.
In a post to social media, Barzani said he and the delegation discussed “conditions of Christians in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, particularly the Nineveh Plain.” The administrative reach of the Kurdistan Regional Government includes the entirety of the Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah governorates in Iraq’s north. The Nineveh Plain falls under the jurisdiction of the Nineveh Governorate just east of the KRI.
According to Darmo’s account of the meeting, detailed in a live video on Facebook, the delegation discussed issues including the federal court’s ruling on minority seats in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament and land seizures some Assyrian landowners allege are taking place across the region. The Word could not independently verify the content of the discussion.
Assyrians in parts of the Kurdistan Region have alleged land encroachment and expropriation for decades. In 2022, a widely shared video of an altercation over land in Badarash triggered community outcry and a series of arrests of Assyrians by KRI police.
According to Darmo, Barzani promised to personally review complaints and court cases wherein landowners say rulings in their favor have not been implemented. The Word could not independently verify this account at the time of publication. Some community activists responded online with notes that the issue has been ongoing for years — and they’ve appealed to courts, legislators, and administrative bodies to no avail.
Barzani did not acknowledge discussion of the topic in his summary of the meeting on social media.
Barzani met with current and former government officials while in the capital. Among those on the list were former president George W. Bush, who led the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Kurdish leader said on social media after the meeting he had thanked the former president “for liberating Iraq from a brutal dictator and for backing the democratic process in the country.”
A statement from the State Department on the meeting with Blinken said the secretary of state “emphasized that U.S. support for a resilient IKR would continue to be a cornerstone” of US-Iraq relations.
Khlapieel Bnyameen contributed reporting from Iraq.