Who Are The Mother Agnes Critics?

Hussein Al-alak writes:

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t for the severity of the Syrian crisis, to read some of the allegations being directed against the Syrian-based nun, Mother Agnes Mariam.

The Open Letter to Stop the War Coalition, has been signed by over fifty alleged activists, who declare themselves to be “opponents of conflict”, and which has been endorsed by the Independent’s journalist Owen Jones, has since seen Mother Agnes remove herself from Stop the War’s annual conference.

What has been omitted from the open letter though, which denounces Mother Agnes as being a “partisan” for Assad, has been some background details of those claiming that Mother Agnes, “has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime”.

Looking over the list of 55 names, a substantial number of those who have signed strike a chord with anyone familiar with the marginal fringes of Britain’s left-wing circuit. Included are members of Workers’ Power, the Socialist Workers’ Party, the International Socialist Network and former members of the now defunct Workers’ Revolutionary Party.

It strikes me as strange that this motley crew of self-proclaimed British Trotskyists view themselves as being the vanguard of Human Rights in Syria, especially with their warped views of the world, which includes the tiny London-based Workers’ Power declaring themselves to have established the Fifth Communist International.

Even on their website, there appears to be little on either the political or humanitarian crisis in Syria, nothing about Mother Agnes, but a lot about the Trotskyist interpretation on the Marxist Theory of Economics, and adverts for pamphlets on the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky and a “reprinted edition of Degenerated Revolution”.

The same applies to the International Socialist Network, one of the many breakaway groups from the Socialist Workers’ Party, alongside Workers’ Power, but finding any information on Syria, Mother Agnes or even the Middle East, seems to be lost among the articles on the evils of Capitalism, the transitional phases to achieve real Communism, and a Comradely letter sent to them from none other than Workers’ Power.

An interesting reference has come up, though. Socialist Resistance, who over the past twenty years have been known as the International Marxist Group and Socialist Outlook, are seeking to merge with the International Socialist Network and have kindly informed the public that, should this go ahead, they will gladly undergo yet another name change!

It is laughable that Jeremy Scahill and The Independent’s Owen Jones would also endorse the words of people who were in the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) but would dare to put their names to a letter which accuses Mother Agnes of covering “up the brutality” of a foreign regime.

From 1979 on, the WRP provided Saddam’s Iraqi embassy with intelligence on dissident Iraqis living in Britain, which would have also included members of Britain’s Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq.

An example of the party’s relationship to Baghdad occurred in March 1979, when the central committee of the WRP in Britain, voted to approve the execution of more than twenty opponents of the Iraqi government, who in the run-up to their murders in Iraq had suffered from “prolonged torture”.

One of the victims, Talib Suwailh, had only months earlier unknowingly brought fraternal greetings to a conference of a WRP front organisation.

“War is terrible, terribly profitable” as V.I Lenin once stated, with capitalism clearly working, and a clear lack of past interest in human rights concerns from some now denouncing Mother Agnes. But only on the condition that it does bring in amounts of £1,075,163 from foreign Governments to British left-wing groups, just like it did with the WRP.