dr. arian ishaya, a historian and anthropologist of ucla, states that the confusion of names applied to the assyrians, and a denial of assyrian identity and continuity, is on one hand borne out of 19th- and early 20th-century imperialism and condescension on the part of the west, rather than by historical fact, and on the other hand by long-held islamic, arab, kurdish, turkish and iranian policies, whose purpose is to divide the assyrian people along false lines and deny their singular identity, with the aim of preventing the assyrians having any chance of unity, self-expression and potential statehood.