With the 8 December 2024 flight to Russia of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and the naming of the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Shan (HTS) Ahmed al-Sharaa as interim President of Syria, there is a slow return of individuals who had been refugees in other countries or displaced within Syria. There were some three million Syrian refugees in Turkey, a million in Germany, others in neighboring Lebanon, and others disbursed in smaller number in many other countries especially those, such as West Africa, where there were long-settled Syrian and Lebanese communities, often merchants.
For many who return, the first priority is to find what has happened to family members with whom they have lost contact. Since December 2024, the prisons have been opened and prisoners liberated including children born in the prison and who had never been outside. In other cases, the family member has been killed or died and put into an unmarked common grave. One has to search for photos among the many documents left in the prisons for photos of the dead. However, many documents were left in disorder as the prison authorities fled. It is reported that many prisoners were killed on the last days before the prison authorities fled. It is also reported that there were "secret prisons" run by government security agencies in unknown locations.
In many cases, those returning often after more than a decade abroad learn that their former home has been destroyed, often a whole section of the area where they lived. In other cases, when the home is still standing, another, unrelated family is living there with unclear property rights.
In the al-Assad government, there were many "informers" - people who were not officially government workers but who watched their neighbors and reported to the police or other security bodies. Thus, there is still today a wide-spread feeling of not knowing whom to trust.
The revolt against Bashar al-Assad began in 2011 in the southern city of Daraa when a group of teen-aged boys who had painted anti-Bashar graffiti were sentenced to death. By 2013, the revolt had become militarized as soldiers from the Syrian Army deserted and took their weapons with them. In 2015, Russian forces entered the scene to support al-Assad and fighting became more war like. Although there were efforts at mediation, especially at the United Nations in Geneva, no negotiations in good faith were carried out. The fighting is estimated to have killed over six hundred thousand people from a population of twenty-two million. As many as a hundred and fifty thousand people "disappeared" and are probably dead.
Today, there is both the weight of the past and fear of an uncertain future. We must hold in a healing light all the people of Syria.
René Wadlow, Association of World Citizens
#The_UN_Goals #safeforall #apart
