Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ wins. Rayan Kildani’s Babylon Movement takes over Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian city of Baghdede

BAGHDEDE (QARAQOSH), NINEVEH PLAIN, Iraq – Will the city of Baghdede, like its neighbor city of Bartella, soon be “decorated” with posters of Ali Khamenei and Qasem Soleimani? This is what the Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians of Baghdeda, in the Hamdaniye district on the Nineveh Plain, are now fearing. Because, in its latest move for total dominance over the Nineveh Plain, the Iranian-backed Babylon Movement has now gobbled up the mayoral office of Baghdede.

Babylon Movement’s Samer (Kajo) Youssef Habeeb is the new district mayor of Hamdaniya, after the Nineveh Governate Council voted on his appointment, and he will have seat in and administer its biggest city Baghdede. He joins the mayors of Bartella and Telkef, who were previously parachuted there by Babylon Movement leader Rayan Kildani. The Babylon Movement leader is on the US sanctions list and his militia, the Babylon Brigade, is part of Iraq’s para-military Popular Mobilization Forces. 

Samer Youssef Habeeb replaces mayor Cissam Behnam Matti, the latest Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian victim of an open display of power by the political and military forces backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Matti is a real Baghdede man. He loves his city. Under his leadership, Baghdede was rebuilt after the terrorist organization Islamic State was defeated. The terrorists had caused great havoc in the Christian city. Under Matti, the city thrived again economically and socially.

With his latest show of power, Rayan Kildani now holds most of the cards in the political and social fold of the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian component in the Nineveh Plain and within the central government in Baghdad. His Babylon Movement occupies 4 of the 5 quota seats in Iraqi parliament reserved for the Christian component. Rayan Kildani’s brother Aswan Kildani being one of them. 

How things will now turn out in the Nineveh Plain, homeland of the Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians in Iraq, is highly uncertain. Whether their longed-for wish to transform the Nineveh Plain into a governorate for their people will ever be realized hangs by a very thin thread.