Colonial Karma

Unpacking the notion of “pro-Assad”

Mr. Adnan Hussain is standing supposedly as an “independent” candidate to unseat the sitting Member of Parliament, the Labour Party’s Kate Hollern in next week’s General Election. There is no doubt Mr Hussain is an honourable person who has reached the top of his legal profession and he has every right to stand. However, his candidacy was announced after former UK ambassador, Mr. Craig Murray of the Workers Party of Britain had thrown his hat in the ring in the wake of the Gaza Genocide and more specifically after Worker’s Party leader, George Galloway had won his seat in Rochdale.

Both Hussain and Murray seek to punish Labour Party for its support of the British establishment backed Zionist-colonial genocide in Gaza. Mr Murray had stood for elections in Blackburn almost 20 years ago in 2005 when he attempted to unseat the then Labour Foreign Secretary, the war criminal Jack Straw. What motivated Mr. Murray back then was the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It is understandable Mr. Murray now seeks to punish Labour for its current support for the genocide in Palestine.

Murray didn’t achieve his aim in 2005 of unseating the war criminal Straw partly because a de facto Asian voting bloc, the Muslim community, remained loyal to Labour. As Straw claims in his biography, the “critical factor” was “the loyalty of and commitment of Asian Labour members” among them a certain “Ibby Master” who was the war criminal’s Straw campaign manager. The same Ibby (aka Ibrahim Master) is today the campaign manager for Adnan Hussain. Is this pure coincidence? Or as Craig Murray seems to imply, others may have set up Adnan Hussain to split the pro-Palestine, anti-genocide vote in Blackburn to make sure Labour wins?   

More so, the manner some of Mr. Hussain’s supporters advocate for him does raise eyebrows. A certain Mohammed H Congress who has the X-handle, @Congy99 on the X social media platform claims that Galloway is “pro-Assad”. The notion that someone who didn’t support the CIA’s $1 billion regime change program in Syria, Operation Timber Sycamore is “pro-Assad” is standard western imperialist and al-Qaeda propaganda. During the war on Syria, the west in their media claimed they were supporting Syrian “moderate rebels” but this was simply their way of beautifying the characters that flooded the country from around the world to consciously or unconsciously assist the CIA to destroy the Syrian state. Most Syrians had wanted nothing to do with the head chopping CIA funded characters, especially in Syria’s second city, Aleppo.

The jibe of “pro-Assad” was also used by a “Maria Hussain” who is said to be the sister of Mr. Hussain. She accuses Galloway of being “very clearly pro Assad, pro Russia, and pro Iran”. She claims that Mr. Galloway picks and chooses which Muslims he supports as he is blind to the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria. This is clearly not true and reveals that “Maria Hussain” has a very limited ability in understanding West Asian politics. At best, she can’t comprehend or refuses to acknowledge that the same people who are supporting the genocide in Palestine are one and the same people supporting the so-called “moderate rebels” aka al-Qaeda in Syria.

Mr. Hussain also charges the Worker’s Party leader with being pro-Assad. Speaking to the Anglo-Qatari on-line journal, Middle East Eye he claims that Galloway, “supports the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which has overseen a war that has killed half a million people.” Needless to say Qatar funnelled hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, supporting the armed groups to destroy Syria in collusion with the CIA. Actually, as this blogger has argued, there is a symbiotic relationship between Qatar funding al-Qaeda linked armed groups in Syria and Qatar ploughing its billions of dollars in the name of “investments” into the British economy.

Obviously, one cannot claim two social media accounts are representative of Hussain supporters. They may simply be ‘lone wolves’ who see in Hussain someone they can relate to. Yet one should not be blind to the propaganda method used here. Every time the time West wanted to destroy a country, they dehumanised the leader. They convinced its populations that the leader and the country are one and the same. If you opposed the NATO destruction of Libya, you were a Gaddafist; if you opposed the destruction of Iraq you were Saddamist, etc etc…This line of argument allows regime change propagandists to avoid discussing serious argument, such as should Muslims be used as canon fodder for CIA backed regime change military campaigns? For some reason, it seems that both Congress and Maria Hussain have no issues with turning a blind eye to the CIA’s collusion with al-Qaeda linked armed groups.

In conclusion, Mr. Murray is not only standing on an anti-genocide ticket but also an anti-imperialist one. His position is entirely consistent with his long standing beliefs. He opposes Western imperialist foreign policy and has paid the price of being hounded by the British state and imprisoned. Mr Hussain on the other hand is having his electoral campaign managed by the former campaign manager of war criminal, Jack Straw. You don’t need to be an Einstein to work out who has the best intentions to defeat Labour in Blackburn.