Good news!
Sounds like wishful thinking from the Sunni Arab media, who are obviously opposed to Assad, Syria’s Alawite leader who has spent the past decade trying to drive its Sunni Arab population out of the country. In fact, he doesn’t want any of them back.
Take the case of Syrians willing to return from Lebanon, a nation hosting 1.5 million Syrians and one that is friendlier to Assad compared with Turkey or Europe. Even from there, the Assad government is actively refusing Syrians re-entry, normally without offering any official explanation. Under the repatriation process, Lebanon’s General Security Directorate prepares a list of Syrians willing to go back and shares it with its counterparts in Syrian intelligence. Only those allowed by the Syrian regime are given the right to go back.
Mouin Merhebi, Lebanon’s state minister for refugee affairs until January this year and a supporter of Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri, said the fact that such a list is asked for by the Syrian state is an indicator of Assad’s unwillingness to accept the refugees. “How can they explain why they are asking for the list of the returnees? They don’t allow anyone to return without approval from the Mukhabarat [the Syrian intelligence branch],” he said. “Is it logical that Syrians in Lebanon need permission to go back to their own country?”
Merhebi said that during his time in office, the difference in numbers between the those who applied to go and those who finally could was massive. “I have been told by our General Security officials that when a list of 5,000 Syrians was sent, on an average just about 60-70 were cleared,” he said. Alain Aoun, a member of parliament for the Free Patriotic Movement, the party of Lebanese President Michel Aoun and a political ally of Hezbollah—and so generally softer on Assad—sits on the opposite side of the political divide to Merhebi. However, he endorsed his assessment and said the Assad government did not seem overly concerned about the return of its people.
“The Syrian regime is not doing anything to take its refugees back,” he said. Aoun quoted a meeting with Cardinal Paul Gallagher, the foreign minister of the Vatican, which has taken a close interest in the refugee issue, to substantiate his assertion. “Gallagher told a visiting Lebanese delegation that Assad would never take back the millions who fled.”]
ping
Russia and Iran contending for influence in Syria. If that contention becomes do-or-die critical it will manifest in attempts by Assad (and Russia) to get control of Hezbolla in Syria or even get Hezbolla out of Syria, once the “Syrian opposition” is fully contained.