The Struggle for Independence 177
them as Christians. Abandoned by the Russians on the outbreak
of the Revolution in 1917, some 20,000 fought their way south
through the Turkish lines to join forces with the British in northern
Iraq, losing twice that number en route. Some were now settled
in northern Iraq and took some 'rather drastic steps' to clear the
area of the existing Muslim population. In 1920 an Assyrian band
attempted to establish a buffer-state on the Turco-Persian frontier,
but the venture degenerated into an indiscriminate raid on both
unfriendly and friendly Turks. In 1921 the British began to form
the 'Iraq Levies' from their excellent fighting-men, as being the
one element in the mixed population on -whom they could rely for
suppressing sporadic Kurdish risings and expelling Turkish ir-
regulars from northern Iraq. In 1924 two companies of the As-
syrian levies mutinied in Kirkuk, killing fifty of the Turkish
townspeople. From this time onward their exploits were less
remarkable, but they continued to be employed and favoured by
the R.A.R for their qualities as garrison-troops, and the Anglican
Church encouraged them as a Christian minority which had
suffered persecution and was, moreover, because of its ancient
heresy, not protected by any other Christian church. Thus the
patronage of Britain encouraged the young and inexperienced
Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun1 and some of their secular chiefs to
presume too much, and to isolate themselves still further from the
other inhabitants of Iraq. With the ending of the Mandate in 1932
the Iraqi government was ready to settle old scores with this un-
invited and overweening minority. A party of 800 Assyrians
crossed the Tigris into Syria in the hope that the French would allow
them to settle, but recrossed and destroyed an Iraqi post. The
Iraqi main body defeated this party, with wild excitement at
having broken the Assyrian reputation for invincibility. The same
Iraqi troops then attacked another group of 400 Assyrians, who
were not at all in agreement with their leaders* hostile attitude to-
wards the Iraqi government and had taken refuge in an Iraqi
police-post. The Iraqis first disarmed them, and then murdered
them in cold blood, before going on to sack and destroy twenty
Assyrian villages and badly damage twenty more out of a total of
sixty-four. There is little doubt that the massacre was, if not pre-
meditated, at least arranged by the local army-officers and that
some local civil officials must have connived at it. The news was
1 He is now in the U.S.A.