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Ankawa (; , ) is a suburb of Erbil in Kurdistan Region, Iraq. It is located northwest of downtown Erbil. The suburb is predominantly populated by Christian Assyrian, most of whom adhere to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Ankawa has many archaeological sites, including "The Hill," which was recorded as an archaeological site in Iraq in 1945. It is also home to Cathedral of Saint Joseph (Umra d'Mar Yosip), the seat of the Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Arbil.Richard Spencer, Iraq crisis: The streets of Erbil’s newly Christian suburb are now full of helpless people, The Daily Telegraph, August 08, 2014 Ankawa used to be a small village located northwest of Erbil, but has grown into a city in its own right. The city has recently become a principal settlement for Christians in Iraq. One of the main reasons for the town's population rise is due to the Islamic State takeover of the Nineveh Plains in 2014 after KRG security forces forcibly disarmed local populations in the Nineveh Plains, asserting a full monopoly of arms and control over security, while pledging to protect all, and then preemptively retreated from their posts as ISIS approached, abandoning the local populations and exposing them to genocide, all without informing locals that they were withdrawing at the last minute and without firing a single bullet. This caused a fair amount of those who fled to come to Ankawa and other areas in Kurdistan Region. The Assyrian Church of the East, which after several decades of being located in the United States, has decided to move their Patriarchal see to Ankawa.
The KRG released an official statement in which they denied these allegations and referred to them as “baseless.”
The API responded to the KRG's denial of these claims in a later report. The API claimed that this latest denial of human rights abuses by the KRG is consistent with previous denial of accusations of wrongdoing. Examples of this that the API provided was the KRG's denial of accusations made by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the US Department of State Human Rights Report. The report goes on to say that the reason that the API had originally made the claim about the KRG tax policy was due to an Ankawa-based activist group called Hand in Hand approaching them and explaining the situation to them. The report also provided documentation of the ordinance in question that proved that a new tax policy specifically in Ankawa had been created by the KRG.
The report then says that Assyrian business-owners affected by the new tax policy as well as Assyrian parliamentarians in the Iraqi Parliament and the Kurdistan Region Parliament who corroborated these claims. Some business-owners attempted to legally appeal the policy, but the government upheld its decision.
Furthermore, the report claimed that the Assyrian parliamentarians who were interviewed about the new tax policy claimed that they had inquired to the KRG Shura Council about the policy, and received a response saying:
The API stated that this was essentially a public admission by the KRG that the tax collection policy was arbitrary.
The report concluded that the tax rate was imposed on the city of Ankawa as an act of business discrimination against one of the only Assyrian-majority areas in KRG jurisdiction. They encouraged the KRG to formally accept their role in this policy, and claimed that they, “stand ready to meet with KRG officials both in Iraq and in the United States to address the many long-standing grievances of Ankawa residents, including the improper confiscation of lands belonging to Assyrians and KRG policies advancing Kurdification in the area, as well as interference in local, regional, and federal elections for Assyrian representatives.”
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