Syria updates: Turkey ready to support fledgling army – DW – 12/15/2024

Students in Syria have returned to their classrooms after the country’s new rulers ordered schools to reopen in a powerful sign of a return to normality. 

Most schools were said to be opening around the country on Sunday — the first day of the working week in most Arab countries.

Amid some uncertainty about the stability of the situation, some parents were not sending their children to class.

The Associated Press reported that, at the Nahla Zaidan school in the capital’s Mezzah neighborhood, teachers had raised the three-starred revolutionary flag in place of the former government’s two-starred flag.

“Syria is trying to build up this country with these children who came. Although I think some of them are afraid, they came to build Syria and to live the victories of this country,” said Maysoun Al- Ali, director of the school.

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants crossed the Turkish border back into their homeland in the five days since the fall of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, according to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

In a statement on social media, Yerlikaya listed the total number of Syrians “who returned voluntarily from Turkey” each day between December 9 and 13.

The five-day figure totaled 7,621 people. 

Nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011 made Turkey their home.

Many hundreds of refugees were seen massing on Monday at the Cilvegozu border crossing some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Aleppo, Syria’s second city. 

Interior Ministry figures showed 1,259 crossed that day alone.

Yerlikaya said earlier this week that, within 48 hours of Assad’s fall, Turkey had increased its daily crossing capacity from 3,000 to between 15,000 to 20,000. 

With anti-Syrian sentiment high in Turkey, Ankara is keen to see as many refugees as possible return home. 

Turkey shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Syria with five operational crossings. Ankara also said it would open a sixth in the far west to “ease the traffic.”

The United Nations envoy for Syria has arrived in the country’s capital Damascus, a week after the fall of the country’s ruler Bashar Assad to Islamist-led rebels.

Special envoy Geir Pedersen said he hoped for a swift end to the sanctions to help facilitate economic recovery.

“We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria,” Pedersen said as he arrived to meet Syria’s caretaker government and other officials.

Turkey has said it is ready to provide military support to Syria’s new government should this be required.

In comments reported by Turkish media, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said the new government, headed up by the Islamist-led rebels, should be given an opportunity to prove itself.

“We have military training and cooperation agreements with many countries. We are ready to provide the necessary support if the new administration requests it,” Guler said.

He did not specify what support might be provided.

“In their first statement, the new administration that toppled Assad announced that it would respect all government institutions, the United Nations, and other international organizations,” Guler told reporters in Ankara in comments authorized for publication on Sunday.

“We think that we need to see what the new administration will do and to give them a chance.”

Asked whether Ankara was considering military cooperation with the new Syrian government, Guler said Turkey already had military cooperation and training accords with many countries.

Guler also said he saw no sign of a complete withdraw of Russian forces.

“I don’t think the Russians are going to leave. They’ll do everything they can to stay,” he said.

The president of the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) has dismissed calls within Germany for the repatriation of  Syrians after the fall of Assad.

The comments come amid a crisis faced by railway operator Deutsche Bahn in particular, which is grappling with frequent delays, ageing infrastructure, underinvestment and strikes.

In response to a query from the DPA news agency, VDV chief Ingo Wortmann said Syrian workers were vital to keeping the country’s trains and buses running.

“We harm Germany as a business location if people who want to work here cannot stay with us,” said Wortmann.

He dismissed a demand from Jens Spahn, a top conservative Christian Democratic Union politician in favor of repatriation as “political grandstanding.” 

“We cannot do without them in many areas,” said Wortmann adding that, in public transport alone, around 2,000 Syrians work nationwide in driving services.

A landmine-clearing group says the extent of unexploded ordnance across Syria is “massive” and poses a particular threat to children returning to the country. 

Since the fall of Assad last weekend, UK-based charity the Halo Trust has seen a 10-fold increase in emergency calls from Syrians worried about landmines and other dormant bombs.

The group has produced an estimated “heat map” of the areas thought to be contaminated with millions of cluster munitions, landmines and unexploded weapons.

Callum Peebles, who oversees the Halo Trust’s work in the Middle East, encouraged returnees to former combat areas to take extra care.

“It’s very easy to say but hard to do — but if you have young children in a post-conflict environment, it’s really important that you try and limit their movement, because children are inquisitive,” he said. “And so often they’re the ones that get injured or killed.”

Germany’s foreign minister has warned that anyone involved in atrocities for the ousted Syrian government who seeks refuge in her country will face “the full force of the law.”

“To any of [former President Bashar] Assad’s torturers who might be considering fleeing to Germany now, I can only say clearly: We will bring all the regime’s henchmen to account for their terrible crimes with the full force of the law,” Annalena Baerbock told the Bild am Sonntag tabloid.

Since 2021, former Syrian secret police officers have already been convicted in Germany for overseeing or facilitating the abuse of detainees.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany is “extremely vigilant” and that “no one who participated in atrocities is safe from prosecution here.”

Feaser said that sentences already handed down show that Germany pursues such crimes rigorously.

She said this should act as a deterrent against people involved in war crimes from going there.

zc/rc (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)