Mother Superior Agnes Mariam of the Cross [1] (born 1952), also known as Mother Agnes, [1] is a Lebanese Christian nun. She is mother superior of the monastery of St James the Mutilated in Syria, a Melkite Greek Catholic monastery in the town of Qara in the Homs diocese. She is outspoken in regard to the Syrian Civil War and, according to Foreign Policy is "one of the most prolific defenders of the" government of Bashar al-Assad. [2]
Born Marie Fadia Laham in Beirut, Lebanon, her Palestinian father had fled Nazareth at the time Israel was created in 1948 [3] [ dead link ] while her mother was Lebanese. [4] After her education by French nuns, she became a hippie for 2 and a half years [5] while travelling in Europe, India and Nepal. (“Lebanese marijuana is the best in the world,” she said. [6] ) While travelling she felt called by God. [5] She then became a nun in the Carmelite order in 1971. [6] She said worked to help displaced families from the Lebanon civil war. [6]
De la Croix gained the consent of the religious authorities to work with the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1992, and moved to Syria about two years later with the objective of establishing a monastic foundation and restoring a monastery. [4] Mother Agnes said at an event in San Francisco during her American tour in 2013: "I used to hate Syrians who came to Lebanon to bomb us every day" during the country's civil war, but "then the Lord called me to Syria to a blessed adventure to restore an ancient monastery that was in ruins" and she underwent a "conversion" after which she "learned never to hate anyone". [5]
De la Croix has been accused by multiple sources of sharing Syrian regime propaganda and disinformation. [2] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, she "was clearly pushing the official line that the 'terrorists' were Islamic extremists bent on overthrowing a regime that she described as a protector of Christian minorities in Syria". [12] In 2012, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, a priest who had lived in Syria for 30 years but was expelled during the war, described de la Croix as "an instrument" of Assad’s government: "She has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime, and promoting it through the power of her religious persona... She knows how to cover up the brutality of the regime.” [13]
During the civil war, she used her close relations to the Assad government and connections to Christian circles in Western Europe to host visitors to Syria under the protection of the regime. [12] After French journalist Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs during 2012 (one of the first journalist casualties in the Civil War [14] ), his widow and two colleagues wrote a book in which they alleged de la Croix had been involved in a Syrian government plot to kill Jacquier. De la Croix had been appointed as Jacquier's fixer by the regime, and put him on the bus to Homs the day he was killed, [14] [15] while she remained in Damascus with pro-regime journalists. [12] [16] De la Croix sued for defamation but lost the case. [6] [17]
De la Croix also alleged that the May 2012 Houla massacre, in which the government killed over 100 people, was staged by the opposition and its victims in fact Alawites and Shia converts, a conspiracy theory that was promoted by far right activist Thierry Meyssan and subsequently reached some mainstream media outlets. [18]
The same year de la Croix stated that, in Homs, 80,000 Christians were displaced by opposition groups, and that the majority of fighters were from outside Syria. The latter claim was disputed by, among others, an anti-Assad group named Syrian Christians for Democracy, reported The Independent . [19] Interviewed by The Australian in October 2012, she said the rebellion "steadily became a violent Islamist expression against a liberal secular society." [3]
She attempted to prove that Syrian opposition activists fabricated the videos showing victims of the Ghouta chemical attack in Damascus on 21 August 2013. [1] She had no formal training in analysing video evidence or the use of chemical weapons, and compiled a 50-page report. [20] She said the attacks were staged by rebels and the victims kidnapped pro-government Alawites, a claim rejected by family members of abducted people from that community. [9] [21] Her claims were investigated by Human Rights Watch and refuted, [21] [1] and the New York Times noted that part of her analysis was based on a misunderstanding of the difference between time zones. [22] Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, cited her analysis when he claimed there were "serious grounds to believe" the Ghouta attack "was a provocation", staged by Syrian rebels. De la Croix was interviewed by the Russian RT station about her analysis. [22] [23]
She said that in 2013, rebels based near her monastery warned her extremist fighters wanted to abduct her. The rebels helped her to flee. [6]
She acted as government liaison during the evacuation of Moadamiyah (then under siege) at the end of October 2013. [24] According to rebel spokesman Quasi Zakarya, up to 1,800 women, children and others were freed, but about 300 men were arrested by the government and forced to join the Syrian army. [24] According to Raya Jalabi in The Guardian: "Asked whether she considers Hezbollah and Iran – entities which supported the Assad government – to be complicit in the fabric of foreign sectarian forces inside Syria, she said no, as 'Hezbollah isn't coming in as a religious force, and is not committing crimes of a religious nature.'" [20]
In late 2013, De la Croix toured Israel (a country she told Ha'aretz that she "loved" [25] ) and the United States, and visited Europe, presenting her version of events in Syria. [20] Organised by the Syria Solidarity Movement, a pro-Assad organisation based in California formed to host her, [26] she spoke at venues, mainly churches, on the US west and east coasts. [27] [20] Her US tour was as a representative of the Syrian Mussalaha (“reconciliation”) movement led by Ali Haidar, a minister in Assad’s government and leader of the far right Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). [26]
In November 2013, she withdrew from speaking at the British Stop the War Coalition's annual conference [28] after two participants, Jeremy Scahill and Owen Jones, decided not to speak at the meeting if it meant sharing a platform with de la Croix. [20]
In 2013, de la Croix said she does not support the Assad government and describes herself as part of the liberal opposition to Assad. She said she supports the "civilian population who is suffering purely at the hands of foreign agents". [20] After the Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war began in 2015, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Local voices, such as those of Mother Agnes, were amplified by the pro-Kremlin news outlet RT (formerly Russia Today), as well as by botnets and seemingly fake news websites, to create an appearance of widespread consensus over the Syrian regime’s version of events. This helped to blunt international responses to the conflict." [29]
In 2018, she continued to host pro-government visits to Syria, telling participants that the government of Saudi Arabia, and not that of Syria, was responsible for refugees in Europe, "because it longs for the Islamization of the West". [10]
Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician, military officer, and former dictator who served as the 19th president of Syria from 2000 until his government was overthrown by Syrian rebels in December 2024. As president, Assad was commander-in-chief of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces and secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Major General Maher Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian former military officer who served as commander of the Syrian Army's elite 4th Armoured Division, which, together with Syria's Military Intelligence, formed the core of the Ba'athist regime's security forces until its collapse in 2024. He is the younger brother of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and also was a member of the Central Committee of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.
Bouthaina Shaaban is a Syrian politician who served as political and media adviser to the presidency under Bashar al-Assad until his overthrow in 2024. Shaaban had also previously served as the first Minister of Expatriates for the Syrian Arab Republic, between 2002 and 2008, and was described as the Syrian government's face to the outside world at the time.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by the government's security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the insurgency had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, all sides have used social media to try to discredit their opponents by using negative terms such as 'Syrian regime' for the government, 'armed gangs/terrorists' for the rebels, 'Syrian government/US State Department propaganda', 'biased', 'US/Western/foreign involvement'. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, given the complexity of the Syrian conflict, media bias in reporting remains a key challenge, plaguing the collection of useful data and misinforming researchers and policymakers regarding the actual events taking place.
The Free Syrian Army is a big-tent coalition of decentralized Syrian opposition rebel groups in the Syrian civil war founded on 29 July 2011 by Colonel Riad al-Asaad and six officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces. The officers announced that the immediate priority of the Free Syrian Army was to safeguard the lives of protestors and civilians from the deadly crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's security apparatus; with the ultimate goal of accomplishing the objectives of the Syrian revolution, namely, the end to the decades-long reign of the ruling al-Assad family. In late 2011, the FSA was the main Syrian military defectors group. Initially a formal military organization at its founding, its original command structure dissipated by 2016, and the FSA identity has since been used by various Syrian opposition groups.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian uprising from September to December 2011. This period saw the uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the ongoing crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.
The siege of Homs was a military confrontation between the Syrian Ba'athist regime and the Syrian opposition in the city of Homs, a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian Civil War. The siege lasted three years from May 2011 to May 2014, and ultimately resulted in an opposition withdrawal from the city.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2012, during which time the spate of protests that began in January 2011 lasted into another calendar year. An Arab League monitoring mission ended in failure as Syrian troops and anti-government militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged opposition strongholds. A United Nations-backed ceasefire brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan met a similar fate, with unarmed UN peacekeepers' movements tightly controlled by the government and fighting.
Gilles Jacquier was a French photojournalist and reporter for France Télévisions. Jacquier worked as a special correspondent for Envoyé spécial, one of France's best known documentary programs which airs on France 2. He had a successful career, has covered major international military conflicts and won many awards during his life. He was killed on 11 January 2012 while covering the ongoing Syrian Civil War in Homs, Syria. Jacquier was the first Western journalist killed in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War.
The Syrian Civil War is an intensely sectarian war. However, the initial phases of the uprising in 2011 featured a broad, cross-sectarian opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, reflecting a collective desire for political reform and social justice, transcending ethnic and religious divisions. Over time, the civil war has largely transformed into a conflict between ruling minority Alawite government and allied Shi'a governments such as Iran; pitted against the country's Sunni Muslim majority who are aligned with the Syrian opposition and its Turkish and Persian Gulf state backers. Sunni Muslims made up the majority of the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and many held high administrative positions, while Alawites and members of almost every minority had also been active on the rebel side.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from May to August 2012. The majority of death tolls reported for each day comes from the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition activist group based in Syria, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, another opposition group based in London.
This page provides a map and a list of cities and towns during the Syrian civil war.
The Darayya massacre was a massacre carried out by Syrian government forces of Bashar al-Assad that occurred between 20 and 25 August 2012 in the town of Darayya in the Rif Dimashq province of Syria, during the Syrian civil war.
The Farouq Brigades was a Syrian Islamist rebel group formed by a number of Homs based members of the Free Syrian Army in the early phases of the Syrian Civil War. The group rapidly expanded in size and prominence in 2012, before suffering internal splits and battlefield reversals in 2013 that greatly reduced its influence. By 2014, the group was largely defunct, with its member defecting to other rebel groups. The rebel group were named Farouq after Omar bin al-Khattab, a Sahaba (companion) of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and the second Caliph.
The al-Qusayr offensive was an operation by the Syrian Government forces against Opposition forces at al-Qusayr in Homs province, during the Syrian Civil War. The operation was launched on 4 April 2013. The Syrian Army, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the National Defense Forces played key roles in the attack. Its aim was to capture all villages around the rebel-held town of al-Qusayr, thus tightening the siege of the city and ultimately launching an attack on al-Qusayr itself. The region was an important supply route for rebels fighting Syrian government forces in Homs.
The Battle of Maaloula took place during the Syrian Civil War fought in September 2013, when rebel forces attacked a military field in the town of Maaloula, a Christian majority town in which the population speaks mainly Western Neo-Aramaic. The town is located 56 km to the northeast of Damascus, and built into the rugged mountainside, at an altitude of more than 1500 metres.
The Battle of Qalamoun started on 15 November 2013, with air strikes on the town of Qara, in the strategic Qalamoun region, in an attempt by the Syrian Army to cut rebel supply lines to Damascus from Lebanon. The strategic region had been used by rebel forces as a rear base for its operations around the capital Damascus. For its part, government forces had been using the nearby highway to link Damascus with the central Homs province and had multiple weapons depots in the area. The battle was primarily led on the rebel side by the Al-Nusra Front.
The history of Syria covers events which occurred on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and events which occurred in the region of Syria. Throughout ancient times the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic was occupied and ruled by several empires, including the Sumerians, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Amorites, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Syria is considered to have emerged as an independent country for the first time on 24 October 1945, upon the signing of the United Nations Charter by the Syrian government, effectively ending France's mandate by the League of Nations to "render administrative advice and assistance to the population" of Syria, which came in effect in April 1946.
The early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war lasted from late July 2011 to April 2012, and was associated with the rise of armed oppositional militias across Syria and the beginning of armed revolution against the Ba'athist Syrian state. Though armed insurrection incidents began as early as June 2011 when rebels killed 120–140 Syrian security personnel, the beginning of organized insurgency is typically marked by the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on 29 July 2011, when a group of defected officers declared the establishment of the first organized oppositional military force. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel, the rebel army aimed to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power.
Mother Superior Agnes Mariam de la Croix claims she has evidence that rebels faked the 21 August gas attack footage – but much of it does not stand up to scrutiny.
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