On January 21st, 2014 the Iraqi government announced a plan to create three new self-governing provinces. The result of the announcement was celebrations led by Assyrians in Iraq and the west for the success of a century old campaign to create a province in the plains of Nineveh. Assyrian political and social organizations declared the plans to be a step towards a future where the community could administer its internal affairs and live in safety without the interference of central government officials in Baghdad. The plans for an Assyrian controlled territory or a state in northern Iraq was rooted in Agha Petros’ campaign to the British administration and the League of Nations in 1921-32. Petros was a military leader that led the Assyrian troops during the First World War. Petros and other Assyrian leaders contended that as a nation, the Assyrians were entitled to receive special consideration in the context of the nascent Iraqi state. They argued that in order to protect the Assyrian population from violence and absorption into the Arab centric state in Iraq, the League of Nations and the British colonial government were obliged to create a special administrative unit for the Assyrians and Yazidies in Iraq. Assyrian leaders asked the British government to grant the community a region in the Mosul province. This paper will argue that the plan for the creation of an independent Assyrian state or semi independent authority in northern Iraq contributed to a discourse that hindered the inclusion of the refugee population into the social and political makeup of the Iraqi state. The paper will also argue that the discourse for independence from the central government in Baghdad drove Iraqi officials to see the Assyrians as foreign invaders who were planning the destruction of the nascent Iraqi state. The proposal for an independent state also fed into an emerging Assyrian nationalist discourse that eventually led to a number of violent conflicts between Assyrians and Iraqis in 1923, 1924, and culminating in the Simile massacre of 1933. This paper will explore the reasons for the subsequent exclusion of Assyrians from the process of state building in the modern Iraqi state. The paper will also fit into the panel objectives by better understanding how the Assyrian minority dealt with violence and hostility perpetuated by the modern Iraqi state.