The Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council (CSAPC, syr, ܡܘܬܒܐ ܥܡܡܝܐ ܟܠܕܝܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ ', ar, المجلس الشعبي الكلداني السرياني الآشوري '), popularly known as Motwa, is a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

, that was founded in 2007, on the initiative of Sarkis Aghajan, a high-ranking member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. As a party that represents minority communities, CSAPC participated in several

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative ...

, both on national, regional and local levels, mainly in various coalitions with other minority parties. The current president of the party is Shamsuddin Georgis Zaya. The party was established in order to represent political interests of Christian minority communities in Iraq. Attempting to overcome internal divisions among those communities, the party was founded under a complex name, that refers to '' Chaldeans'' (adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church), '' Syriacs'' (adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church) and '' Assyrians'' (adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East). One of the main goals of CSAPC is to achieve administrative self-government or outright autonomy for the Nineveh Plains, a northern Iraqi region with high concentration of Christian population. The party claims the majority of the population in the Nineveh Plains suffers neglect and lack of service because they belong to minority groups, whose rights are not fully observed. The Party runs Ishtar TV and publishes several different monthly magazines. The party is closely affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Results

In the January Iraqi governorate elections of 2009, the party was part of a coalition that won the Assyrian reserved seats in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

and

Ninawa Nineveh (; akk, ; Biblical Hebrew: '; ar, نَيْنَوَىٰ '; syr, ܢܝܼܢܘܹܐ, Nīnwē) was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern ba ...

. It officially backed the

Chaldean Democratic Union The Chaldean Democratic Union is a Christian democrat political party in Iraq and within Iraqi Kurdistan a component of the Kurdistani Alliance, designed to promote the Chaldean ethnicity and heritage. They had one member in the Iraqi National Ass ...

for the

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is han ...

seat, which the CDU won. On July 25, 2009, the party ran for the first time on its own for the 111-member

Kurdistan National Assembly The Parliament of Kurdistan ( ku, پەرلەمانی كوردستان ,Perlemanê Kurdistanê or simply Perleman, ar, برلمان كردستان, links=https://www.parliament.krd/arabic/), also called the Kurdish Parliament (IKP), is the par ...

(see 2009 Iraqi Kurdistan legislative election). It received over 10,000 votes and won 3 of the 5 reserved Christian seats. On March 7, 2010, Iraq held its parliamentary elections, where the party won 2 of the 5 reserved seats. The coalition maintained their seats during the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Military wing

The Nineveh Plain Guard Forces (NPGF) is composed of former members of the Church Guards that was forced to disband and disarm in 2014 as Kurdish officials began confiscating weapons that belonged to local Assyrians prior to the

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...

invasion that left the Assyrians defenceless. It's estimated that they currently have 1,500 Assyrian soldiers under

Peshmerga The Peshmerga ( ku, پێشمەرگه, Pêşmerge, lit=those who face death) is the Kurdish military forces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. According to the Constitution of Iraq, the Peshmerga, along with their security subsidiaries, ...

commandContested Control: The Future of Security in Iraq's Nineveh Plain
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References

Sources

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External links

Ishtar TV
{{Authority control Political parties of minorities in Iraq Conservative parties in Iraq Ankawa Assyrian nationalism Assyrian political parties Assyrians in Iraq Christian democratic parties in Asia Political parties in Kurdistan Region

Results

Military wing

See also

References

Sources

External links