Tag: syria

Syria blocks deportations from Germany, leaving more than 11,000 deportation orders in limbo.

Germany is facing a serious administrative bottleneck in its migration policy after it emerged that Syria is allegedly preventing the issuance of travel documents required to carry out thousands of already ordered deportations by German authorities.

The case affects, according to European sources, more than 11,000 Syrian nationals who have received notices to leave the country as part of legal return procedures. However, the lack of consular cooperation from Damascus has effectively stalled a large share of these expulsions.

A system blocked in practice

Although deportation orders have been issued in accordance with German law, their execution depends on a key requirement: official identification and the issuance of travel documents by the country of origin.

Without this documentation, German authorities cannot complete the process, which turns many of these decisions into open cases with no immediate possibility of execution.

The result is a silent but significant blockage within the European migration system, where national decision-making power collides with international reality.

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‘Buffer Zone’ Is Media’s Euphemism for Israeli Occupation

Since October 2023, Israel has occupied vast stretches of territory in Gaza, Syria and, most recently, Lebanon. Corporate media have been reluctant to use clear, direct language to characterize US-backed Israeli land grabs in each of these places, preferring to describe Israel’s policies with euphemistic terminology.

“Buffer” is chief among these. For instance, a Wall Street Journal article (4/9/26) told readers that “Israeli forces now hold buffer zones inside Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.”

Merriam-Webster defines a “buffer zone” as “a neutral area separating conflicting forces.” The UN defines it as “neutral space created by the withdrawal of hostile parties or a demilitarized zone.”

The Journal‘s uncritical use of the term makes it sound as if these Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian lands are demilitarized zones, when in reality they have been taken over by a belligerent foreign army that intends to remain for the long term.

A Boston Globe piece (4/5/26) noted that

Israel has said even after the war with Hezbollah, it plans to occupy part of southern Lebanon, setting up a buffer zone inside the area and keeping security control over the territory. Some analysts say that the move could lead to the permanent displacement of communities from the region.

“Setting up” is part of the same obfuscatory process as “buffer zone.” Amnesty International’s Kristine Beckerle (3/6/26) offered this account of the evacuation orders Israel issued to over 100 villages and towns in Lebanon’s south and east, and the entirety of Beirut’s southern suburbs, key components of how Israel has gone about “setting up a buffer zone”:

The sweeping evacuation orders have sown panic and terror, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and fueled yet another humanitarian catastrophe for a population already exhausted and reeling from multiple crises.

And it’s not just “some analysts” who say that creating this “buffer” could lead to “permanent displacement.” Israeli Defense minister Israel Katz (BBC, 3/31/26) said that the state plans to maintain control over Lebanon south of the Litani River, a 19-mile stretch of territory, even after Israel’s current war on the country ends. Katz added that Israel will demolish “all houses” in Lebanese villages near the Lebanon/Israel armistice line, a move that would make the displacement of the residents of those houses seem awfully permanent. That’s not a “buffer zone”—that’s occupation.

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OPCW Inadvertently Admitted Burying Critical Evidence on Syria Chemical Weapons Investigation

For the first time in a prolonged cover-up scandal, the world’s top chemical watchdog has acknowledged censoring a finding that undermined allegations of a toxic gas attack by the former Syrian government.

According to previously leaked documents, expert German military toxicologists consulted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death of dozens of victims in an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018.

The experts even raised the possibility that the incident was a false flag. The OPCW suppressed this finding and released a final report asserting that chlorine gas was likely used. The OPCW’s conclusion aligned with the claims of the U.S., U.K. and France, which bombed Syria in April 2018 over what they alleged was a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma.

After years of stonewalling, the OPCW has admitted that the Germans’ input, along with the fact that they were even consulted, was concealed.

The concession came during a legal battle with Dr. Brendan Whelan, a veteran OPCW inspector and senior member of the team that deployed to Syria for the Douma mission. Whelan and another Douma team member, Ian Henderson, raised concerns about the manipulation of the investigation’s findings.

After their complaints became public, the OPCW leadership publicly disparaged the two dissenting inspectors and penalized them for alleged breaches of confidentiality.

Whelan successfully challenged his censure before the Geneva-based Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT), which recently awarded him damages and instructed the OPCW to withdraw its impugned decision.

One of the allegations against Whelan was that he improperly sent two letters in March and April 2019 to Fernando Arias, the OPCW director-general, raising concerns about unethical conduct in the Douma investigation.

In trying to make its case against Whelan, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to the censorship that he had challenged.

In his letters to Arias, the OPCW complained, Whelan included

“specific and detailed information gathered by FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] investigators from toxicology experts. This information, classified as OPCW Highly Protected, was not included in the Final Report which was publicly released.”

The OPCW’s confirmation that it excluded the toxicologists’ “Highly Protected” information from the publicly released Final Report confirms one of Whelan’s key grievances.

“Critical information, like the expert opinions of the toxicologists… has, shockingly, been omitted,” Whelan wrote in his April 2019 letter.

“There is even no record in the report of those consultations… To say that this selective use of expert opinions and facts is disturbing is an understatement.”

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Israelis with dual nationality behind ‘large-scale’ acquisition of Syrian agricultural lands: Report

Israel is expanding its control over territory in southern Syria, not merely through military means, but also through the purchase of agricultural lands by individuals of Jewish descent holding multiple nationalities, Al-Akhbar reported on 4 May.

According to a local source in the Deraa Governorate of southern Syria, extensive purchases of agricultural land are underway in the Yarmouk Basin, an area with significant water resources bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

These transactions are reportedly being orchestrated by individuals linked to Jewish agencies and holding passports from various countries, including Canada, Australia, and the UK.

The reports specifically name an organization called the “Pioneers of Bashan” as one of the key parties involved in the land purchases.

According to these sources, the total land area involved in these transactions amounts to approximately 200,000 dunams (200 square kilometers).

The sales have been formalized through official contracts, amid apprehension among local residents regarding the suspected links between some of these deals and Jewish entities.

The sources speaking with Al-Akhbar also reported that an Israeli delegation recently visited archaeological sites in the region – including several hills believed to contain ancient Jewish burial grounds.

In a related context, reports indicate that former Syrian army military sites in the Deraa countryside – including the headquarters of the 61st Brigade and the 128th Battalion (part of the 5th Division) – have been purchased by an Australian businessman. This individual is reportedly acting on behalf of a Jewish agency dedicated to expansion and settlement activities.

Since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government was toppled by formerly Al-Qaeda-linked Salafist extremists in December 2024, Israel has expanded its occupation of the Golan Heights and other territories in southern Syria.

Jewish settler groups in Israel say it is their goal to occupy land in southern Syria and southern Lebanon in a bid to expand the borders of Greater Israel through military conquest and Jewish settlement.

Israeli forces carry out nearly daily incursions into southern Syria, facing no resistance from Syria’s new government, led by the former ISIS commander Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Sharaa’s new army has instead been targeting Syria’s religious minorities, including carrying out major massacres of the country’s Alawites and Druze, as well as at times against Christians and Kurds.

In the 2024 documentary “In Israel: Ministers of Chaos,” Israeli Finance Minister and settler leader Bezael Smotrich stated, “It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.”

Smotrich claimed that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all occupied Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

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Far Right Israeli Settler Movement Enters Syria in a Push for “Greater Israel”

yrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”

“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.

After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.

Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.

The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again

In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.

“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.

But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.

On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.

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Last US Convoy Exits Syria After Brutal 14-Year Regime Change Proxy War

Widespread reports on Thursday say the very last US military convoy has finally departed Syrian territory, with the years-long occupation of the primarily northeast oil and gas rich sector over in a ‘mission accomplished’ fashion.

It brings to a final close the 14-year long bloody proxy war which overthrew the Assad government and ultimately installed a pro-US/Saudi axis puppet, in the person of founding Syrian Al Qaeda Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, now known as President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Hundreds of thousand of people lost their lives in the regime change war, with the country and its economy left in a sanction-starved and conflict-demolished state of ruins.

The US-backed Syrian Foreign Ministry declared Washington had decided to “complete its military mission” in the country. “The Syrian state is today fully capable of leading counter-terrorism efforts from within, in co-operation with the international community,” it said, happy to now be back in control of the domestic oil and gas supply.

The ministry “welcomes the completed handover of military sites where United States forces were previously present in Syria to the Syrian government,” adding that “the handover of these sites was carried out … in full coordination between the Syrian and American governments.”

While Pentagon propaganda had for years touted an ‘anti-ISIS’ mission, the real purpose of the troop presence was to cut off Damascus under Assad of its sovereign natural resources, and to arm and prop up a Kurdish-Arab coalition called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). 

All the while, the CIA supported Sunni hardline jihadists who were indistinguishable from ISIS in their ideology in the fight against the Syrian Army, and the civilian population which often largely supported the secular Ba’ath government. The broader strategy has long been to destroy the Tehran-Baghdad-Hezbollah ‘Shia axis’ – even if that meant using ISIS as a tool of regime change.

Ironically, in the process of this US handover of oil and gas facilities back to post-Assad Damascus, the Kurds were thrown under the bus. Their dream for an autonomous enclave (Rojava) once again proved illusory, and in the long term the Kurds will find themselves at the mercy of Sunni fanatics on the one hand, and Turkish state under Erdogan on the other.

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Surprise! Germany Wants Syrians to Leave – But They Are Refusing

Only about a third of working-age Syrians living in Germany are employed. The government is now attempting to send them back to Syria, since the reason they were allowed in was to escape the Bashar al-Assad regime, which is now gone. But less than 0.001% have accepted voluntary deportation.

Approximately 1.3 million Syrians currently live in Germany, including 25,000 born there. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other conservatives in his coalition have called for their repatriation, arguing there are no longer grounds for asylum since Assad’s fall ended the civil war.

On March 30, speaking alongside Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Berlin, Merz said roughly 80% of Syrians in Germany should return home over the next three years, while acknowledging that well-integrated workers may stay. Al-Sharaa disputed the framing, saying Syrians have built new lives in Germany and that it would be difficult to start over, but that Western investment in Syria could draw them back voluntarily.

The response from Syrians in Germany has been near-total refusal. Since Assad’s fall, roughly 1,300 people, about 0.1%, have voluntarily returned, according to Germany’s interior ministry. Germany offered financial incentives of up to $4,300 per family to encourage voluntary departure, with negligible uptake.

A demonstration against the repatriation plan was held in Berlin the day al-Sharaa met with Merz, under the slogan “No deportation deals with human rights abusers.”

About 15% of Syrians in Germany have acquired German citizenship and cannot be deported. Syrian nationals with a residence permit also cannot be forced to leave. The German coalition agreement between Germany’s leading political parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, permits deportations, but only prioritizes criminals and public safety threats.

Deportations resumed in December 2025 on a limited scale, and no deportations of non-criminal Syrians have been carried out. Migration expert Daniel Thym has noted that once protection status is revoked, the individual has 15 months of legal appeals, and a full court challenge from the affected population would create gridlock.

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US ‘worked directly’ with terrorists in Syria on Israel’s behalf – Trump’s ex-counterterrorism chief

The US “worked directly with Al-Qaeda” and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to topple former President Bashar Assad and destroy Syria, US President Donald Trump’s former counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, has said.

Kent, who resigned as head of the US National Counterterrorism Center in protest of the US-Israeli war against Iran, made the remarks in an interview with MintPress News on Friday.

The former senior official reiterated his take on the Iran conflict as the latest in a series of wars waged by the US on behalf of Israel, preceded by the Second Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War, in which Washington actively backed terrorist groups, he said.

“We came in and we said: We’re going to work with the Israelis, but we’re also going to have to work heavily with the Sunni population on the ground in Syria to create an uprising,” he added.

“And that’s where ISIS came from. We worked directly with Al-Qaeda; Hillary Clinton’s emails confirm this. The operations that we were doing to support the so-called Free Syrian Army, and there were some moderates there, but the most effective guys initially were Al-Qaeda and then eventually ISIS.”

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Israeli Forces Raise Flag Over Syrian Town In Latest Raid: ‘Provocative Act’

Israeli military vehicles rolled into the town of Hadr in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate days ago and raised the Israeli flag over the town’s entrance. Locals say they also closed all but one road leading into or out of the town, and established a checkpoint on that road as well.

Though Israel routinely raids Quneitra’s towns and villages of late, raising the Israeli government’s flag over a town is more provocative than what usually happens in these incidents, and like most of Israel’s military forays on Syrian soil, they’ve yet to issue a statement to even attempt to explain the purpose of the operation.

Hadr is a relatively small town of about 5,000 people along the frontier between Quneitra Governorate and the UNDOF demilitarized zone, a zone which has subsequently been occupied militarily by Israel. Some suburbs of Hadr extend into the demilitarized zone.

Israel also launched operations against multiple other villages in Quneitra earlier this week, including Saida al-Golan and Saida al-Hanout. They captured two young men who were herding sheep to the west of the village.

The troops also captured two village elders in Saida al-Golan, though the elders were ultimately released without incident. The fate of the shepherds remains uncertain, and again the IDF has not commented.

As for the flag-raising incident, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which the mainstream media had long relied on as its main anti-Assad source throughout the prior war, detailed the following of the “provocative act”:

Al-Quneitra province: Israeli forces raised the Israeli flag at the entrance of Hadr Town in northern Al-Quneitra countryside [on Wednesday], raising local questions regarding the escalation in the area.

According to sources, these forces closed secondary roads leading to the town from the side of Al-Qanaif checkpoints, and only kept the main road leading to the town open.

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US Encourages Syria To Consider Military Action Against Hezbollah In Lebanon, But Damascus Remains Hesitant-Barrack Denies

The United States has privately urged Syria’s new government to deploy forces into eastern Lebanon to help dismantle or disarm the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to sources familiar with the discussions. However, Syrian authorities have shown strong reluctance, citing fears of drawing the country into a wider regional war and exacerbating sectarian tensions.

The proposal, first reported by Reuters, comes amid heightened efforts by the US and its allies to weaken Hezbollah following its attacks on Israel in support of Iran. Hezbollah opened fire on Israel on March 2, triggering an Israeli offensive in Lebanon as part of the broader Middle East conflict.

Sources briefed on the matter, including two Syrian officials and others with knowledge of the talks, told Reuters that Washington encouraged Damascus to send troops across the border to target Hezbollah positions in eastern Lebanon. The idea reportedly originated last year and gained renewed attention around the onset of US and Israeli military operations against Iran. Accounts differ on the precise timing: Syrian officials claim the request came just before the escalation, while a Western intelligence source placed it shortly after.

US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkey, swiftly denied the reports. In a post on X, Barrack described the claims that the US encouraged Syrian intervention in Lebanon as “false and inaccurate.” The US State Department declined to comment on private diplomatic exchanges.

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