Srood Maqdasy

Srood Salem Matti Maqdasy is an Assyrian physician, politician, and former member of the Kurdistan Region Parliament in Iraq. Maqdasy stood out as one of just eleven representatives elected to represent minority groups in Iraqi Kurdistan's 111-member assembly, after their elections in 2013. He was one of five total Assyrians in parliament after the elections, and served in the parliament until 2018.

Maqdasy represented the Sons of Mesopotamia, an Assyrian political party that was formed after dissatisfaction with the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

Early life Maqdasy was born in Ankawa, Iraq, where he grew up in a relatively safe Assyrian neighborhood. His father was a government employee, working in the directorate of agriculture in Erbil. His father had previously served in the Iraqi Armed Forces as a soldier during the Iraq-Iran War. His mother was a housewife, who Maqdasy says held their family together during his father's deployments during the war. He was born into the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Politics Maqdasy became involved in political work when he joined the Assyrian Democratic Movement in 1997. He held various positions in the organization's Erbil branch. In 2007, he was elected to serve as the head of the fifth conference of the ADM in Duhok, and three years later in 2010, was elected to serve as a member of the party's oversight committee during its seventh conference in Baghdad.

Maqdasy says he pursued a career in politics to be an advocate for the Assyrian people, who had suffered from neglect and marginalization since the early 20th century. He stated he believes the national identity and ethnic rights of Assyrians have been denied in Iraq, despite the fact that they are the indigenous people of the land.

In 2013, Maqdasy resigned from the ADM, along with a number of the party's leaders and members, after dissatisfaction with the party's direction under Yonadam Kanna. He, alongside other members who left, formed the Sons of Mesopotamia (Abnaa Al-Nahrain), and was elected to serve in the Kurdish parliament in 2013 representing the new party.

During his tenure, he would be vocal about the political marginalization and second-class treatment that Assyrians faced under the KRG, saying in an interview, "“We can call it a feeling of superiority, we have religious problem, we have problem with regard to land occupation and properties, a lot of problems. So this council will follow these issues...”.

After the Fall of Mosul to ISIS, Maqdasy advocated for an autonomous region for ethnic minorities in Iraq, as well as for personal defense of these minority groups by providing weaponry. Maqdasy would show support for ethnic coexistence and genocide prevention abroad as well, including a visit to Armenia in 2016 as a representative of the KRG.

In 2018, after ISIS had been defeated, Maqdasy expressed dissatisfaction over the roles of the Peshmerga and Popular Mobilization Forces in the Nineveh Plains, and preventing demographic returns after the violence had ended. Before the 2018 Kurdistan Region parliamentary election, he participated in signing a joint letter that called for a delay to the elections until a quota law was amendment that restricted minority voting to solely the Assyrian community, but received no response.

Addressing the European Parliament in 2025, Maqdasy called for an Assyrian autonomous region in the Nineveh Plains, citing the challenges that have been faced over the last 20 years and the need to maintain the cultural and ethnic diversity of the region.

Quotes ‘‘We’ve been here as an ethnicity for 6,000 years and as Christians for 1,700 years...We have our own culture, language and tradition. If we live within other communities, all of this will be dissolved within two generations.’’