Kurdish organizations often refer to local Christians as Kurdish Christians. Some Assyrians in the north of Iraq supported Kurdish military and political activities in order to "advance the cause of Assyrian nationalism" and "sought to control the discourse on nomenclature among the Christian communities utilising 'Assyrian' as a suitable title for all Christians so that the supposed link to the Assyrian people of the Ancient World could be maintained and give credence to their agitation for an independent state". The Assyrian Democratic Movement proposed to refer to the Christian population as "Chaldo-Assyrian", a political appellation from which the Chaldean Church soon withdrew support.