With Assad gone, Europe is immediately sending Syrians away
A cascade of announcements suspending Syrian asylum processing over the past 24 hours shows just how much far-right pressure is making governments desperate to pull levers to restrict migration.
The announcements have come so fast it makes your head spin. On Sunday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was toppled from power and fled to Russia. By Monday morning, European countries were already announcing that they are suspending the processing of Syrian asylum claims which have been ongoing throughout the 13-year civil war. Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Britain, Norway and others have all announced a suspension. Austria has gone even further, with Interior Minister Gerhard Karner telling Austrian media, “I have instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly return and deportation program to Syria.” He did not specify which of the 100,000 Syrian refugees living in Austria is being deported.
Yet at the same time, none of these countries will definitively welcome the new government in Syria, and several of them (including the UK) are still designating Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that led Assad’s overthrow, as a terrorist organization. Some countries, such as Italy, were just a few weeks ago seeking to normalize relations with the Assad regime and preparing to deport Syrian refugees on the basis that the Assad regime was safe and stable. Now they are preparing to deport the refugees because Assad is gone. It is a very strange situation that says more about domestic European politics than it does about the situation in Syria.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed the situation by phone yesterday, according to a statement from Scholz’s office, welcoming the fall of Assad but stopping short of welcoming the new government. They agreed to “work together with the new rulers on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities.” A Commission spokesperson said yesterday that the EU “is not currently engaging with HTS or its leaders - full stop.” EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to make an initial assessment of the new Syrian regime. But the new rulers are doing everything they can to reassure Western governments on precisely this point, making announcements that they will protect minority rights and grant amnesty to Assad’s soldiers. But given that HTS was formerly associated with Al Qaeda, the concern is that these are just words and the intention is actually to set up an Islamic state under Sharia law.
As a reminder, Europe has taken in a colossal number of Syrian refugees over the past 13 years, particularly in Germany under Angela Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” policy. Almost a million Syrians now call Germany home. Significant numbers are also living in Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Greece and Bulgaria. Merkel’s policy has caused a significant backlash in Germany with a rise for the far-right AfD party, which may come in second place in February’s election. Across Europe, migration has become a politically salient issue and governments are eager to pull whatever lever might be available to look like they are lowering it.
But NGOs say the situation in Syria is anything but stable. Even beyond the uncertainty about what kind of state HTS intends to set up, the chaos of the past 13 years isn’t going to go away overnight. 96% of Syrians currently live below the poverty line. For some Syrians, the new regime could represent an even greater threat than the Assad government. Legal experts say that it therefor may become pertinent on which basis a refugee made their asylum claim - were they citing the repression of the Assad regime, or the danger of the civil war and ISIS? If it was the former, the governments may have the standing to say that threat no longer exists and the asylum is no longer valid.
But it may not be that simple. A Syrian teenager today has never known anything but a Syria in civil war. Many of these refugees have built new lives in Europe. In Germany in particular, the sudden loss of the refugees could present unanticipated complications. Yesterday the German hospital association warned that the healthcare system could be put at risk if the large number of Syrian doctors and nurses who now work in it were to suddenly leave. Similar concerns have been raised about the social care sector. After 13 years, the transition to this new era in Syria is not going to be as simple as some might hope.