Christian (Second-Order) Minorities and the Struggle for the Homeland: The Assyrian Democratic Movement in Iraq and the Nineveh Plains Protection Units

ABSTRACT This article explores how a second-order minority, northern Iraq’s Christians, mobilized to protect homelands during state breakdown and state recalibration. It examines how an Iraqi Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), responded to the rise and spread of the Islamic State. More specifically, it analyzes the ADM’s creation of a self-defense force, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), and how the party positioned itself for the post-conflict state. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Iraq combined with existing primary and secondary sources reveals a detailed process whereby notions of historic homelands were manipulated around security threats and a legacy of distrust of both the central government and Kurdistan Regional Government to drive mobilization. The name “Nineveh Plains Protection Units” also served a strategic purpose. A territorial-based identity connected contemporary Christians to an ancient Mesopotamian past. Combined with a shared Christian faith, this served to supersede intragroup/sectarian cleavages and “the ethnic Assyrian debate” without rejecting them. It also acted as a bridge to the country’s other ethno-sectarian groups, finding a way to assert Assyrian and Christian belonging within and to Iraq. Nevertheless, mobilization and the long-term goal of self-determination in the Nineveh Plain were both ultimately contingent upon allying with either Baghdad or Erbil. Although the ADM chose Baghdad, it was left alone to navigate the Nineveh Plain’s position within the Kurdistan independence referendum.