page_title: Assyrian Democratic Movement
section_title: Prior to the Iraqi invasion
hierarchical_section_title: Assyrian Democratic Movement / Prior to the Iraqi invasion
caption_attribution_description: Assyrian fighters in Northern Iraq, in the mid 1980s.
context_page_description: The Assyrian Democratic Movement, popularly known as Zowaa, is an Assyrian political party situated in Iraq, and one of the main Assyrian parties within the Iraqi parliament. The Assyrian Democratic Movement states its aims are to establish equal citizenship rights with the rest of the Iraqi people without discrimination on the basis of nationality, belief, religious affiliation, culture, linguistics and other characteristics of the native Chaldo-Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq, to acknowledge the past massacres committed against them and to ensure they are never repeated again.
  With regards to separatism from Iraq, the Assyrian Democratic Movement maintains that it does not seek the division of Iraq in order to establish an Assyrian state and states in its manifesto:
  "The national axis in the approach of the Assyrian Democratic Movement has components of the Iraqi people, and to contribute to building the democratic pluralistic federal state and establishing the Iraqi state based on justice, equality and the rights of all components.
context_section_description: Due to successful lobbying from influential Assyrian-Americans and from Congressman Henry Hyde, American President George W. Bush designated the ADM an officially recognized Iraqi opposition movement. In a December 9, 2002 memorandum, President Bush invoked both articles four and five of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 as a means of allowing the United States government to provide financial resources to the ADM and other Iraqi opposition groups. Kanna himself participated in a September 2002 meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders in New York and addressed the London conference of Iraqi opposition leaders in December 2002. In February 2003, Kanna addressed both Iraqi opposition leaders and U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad at a conference in northern Iraq. Just hours prior to the American-led war against Iraq in March 2003, Kanna stressed the importance of the coming war for the history of the Assyrian people. He noted that some Assyrians were leaving the cities for the villages and urged diaspora Assyrians to provide humanitarian aid to their brethren.
caption: Zowaa fighters in the Assyrian homeland in the 1980s.
exif: {}