New PM Urges Syrians Abroad To Return Home (Amid Israeli Airstrikes & ISIS Threats)

Syria’s new transitional Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, who had headed up Hayat Tahir al-Sham’s (HTS) administration of Idlib, has urged all Syrian refugees across the globe to return and help rebuild the country.

He announced Wednesday that among his first goals is to “bring back the millions of Syrian refugees who are abroad.” At the moment Bashir and his HTS overseers are urging state employees to return to their respective government ministries in order to get basic services such as electricity fully restored.

Al-Bashir has said that Syrians need “stability and calm” – even as HTS allies, factions, as well as rivals conduct sectarian revenge and execution killings especially in countryside areas of Syria. There have been reports that HTS leaders are urging people not to upload images of such killings or violent reprisal attacks to the internet, dismissing these instances as a few bad acts in a country with millions of people.

Recent United Nations figures say that after 14 years of brutal war, and following the events of the past week, at least six million Syrians are refugees abroad - most of them in neighboring countries like Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan – but many of them in Europe as well.

European countries including Germany and Austria have halted and canceled asylum cases for Syrians, telling them to return home. But it remains that at the moment there’s not much of a home to return to. Germany has been among the first European countries to pledge large sums of humanitarian aid to Damascus.

The vast majority of Syria is without basic services including electricity, with Western studies estimating at least $1.2 trillion in damage after the war. But the most immediate threat to anyone on the ground is the state of lawlessness and likelihood for inter-factional fighting. 

Syria’s new Al Qaeda rulers have already adopted DOGE https://t.co/f4niQNgAq0

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 11, 2024

Israel has also continued its unprecedented bombing campaign across almost all parts of Syria, destroying and degrading the Syrian Army’s bases, missile stockpiles, and chemical weapons facilities. These airstrikes are happening with impunity, as there is no military or anti-air defense units, and they have been going for several days straight, intensifying most in the night hours.

One war monitor has cited at least 350 Israeli airstrikes on Syria in the past four days.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has described that “Israeli fighter jets continue to destroy the remaining military assets in Syria for the fourth consecutive day.”

Meanwhile, Russia is saying that the current situation is ripe for ISIS’ return. “Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has warned that there was a real risk that ISIL (ISIS) fighters could rise again in Syria,” the state RIA news agency has reported. But the reality also is that ISIS-linked factions as well as “former” ISIS members are now comfortably ensconced in Damascus.