Syria has been through ten years of war, destruction, and death. Yet Bashar Assad is still having himself elected president. It's time for a strategy change in dealing with this country in need, writes Matthias von Hein.
The outcome of the Syrian elections has been clear from the startImage: Hussein Malla/AP Photo/picture alliance
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It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict the outcome of the Syrian "presidential election": When all the votes are counted, the winner won't be Abdullah Salloum Abdullah or Mahmoud Ahmad Marei. The two mostly unknown opponents of Bashar Assad are mere extras without a chance in this election farce.
DW's Matthias von Hein
One thing is certain: The old president will be the new one. It's also clear that this election says nothing about the political interests of the Syrian people. It says all the more about the balance of power in the country, though. Perhaps this is the uncomfortable message of this election: Even if Syria lies in ruins after a decade of war, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions on the run ― Assad has not only survived. He also remains in power.
No regime change in sight
Major powers Russia and the United States are militarily engaged in Syria, as are regional powers Turkey, Iran and Israel. The regime in Damascus only controls two-thirds of the country. And yet the Assad regime has decided the Syrian civil war in its favor. There is no regime change in sight, nor is there any negotiated power-sharing. It is time to acknowledge this reality.
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For Syria is a country in distress. Millions are on the run. A decade of war is now being followed by a catastrophic economic crisis. Eleven million Syrians need humanitarian aid, including nearly five million children. The majority of them live in areas under Damascus' control. The implosion of whatever state structures are still in place is a very real threat.
This cannot leave Germany and Europe cold. First and foremost for humanitarian reasons. But also because no one can want Syria to remain a source of conflict, terrorism and refugee movements. The international community is thus faced with a question to which there are no easy answers: How can you create and support stability without strengthening a regime that is both the cause and part of the problem?
Help for the people on the ground
The answer is tricky. It is time for a departure from the unrealistic goal of regime change in Damascus. At the same time, however, there can be no path to normalizing relations with Assad. The prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity in European courts must continue. But Europe must also look for ways to contribute to economic recovery.
So far, Europeans have only been involved in humanitarian aid. The EU member states are by far the largest donors here. But the humanitarian approach is reaching its limits: It is limited to emergency care ― of internally displaced persons and of refugees. Economic recovery and reconstruction in Syria, however, are actively hampered by sanctions.
What is needed now is a strategy that focuses on tangible aid on the ground without lining the regime's pockets. A strategy that explores what concessions Assad might be willing to make below the threshold of political transformation, with appropriate quid pro quos. Diplomacy in the best sense of the word: As the art of the possible, in the interest of the people.
This article was adapted from German.
Syrian photographers document a decade of war
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has compiled moving documents of contemporary history with a collection of images by Syrian photographers who have recorded daily life in the ongoing war.
Image: Bassam Khabieh/OCHA
Searching for memories in the rubble of Raqqa
A woman pushes a stroller through the destroyed landscape of Raqqa in this photograph from 2019. "I was shocked by what happened to my city, in which I have memories in every street," the photographer Abood Hamam says. "They destroyed everything connected to our past and memory with our life in the city, every detail that used to connect me to it. It was so painful."
Image: Abood Hamam/OCHA
A photograph of unending mourning
Brothers embrace after losing their mother in Idlib in 2020. Photographer Ghaith Alsayed, who was 17 when the war began and lost his brother in a bomb attack. "Every time I had to cover an airstrike, it took me back to the day when my brother Amer was killed by the missiles that bombed our city," Alsayed says. "The same scene keeps repeating itself," he adds.
Image: Ghaith Alsayed/OCHA
Lost in the destruction
In this 2020 photo from Mohannad Zayat, a woman and her child shelter in a destroyed Binish school. "When the war in Syria began, I was a high school student, and I never expected myself to be a journalist and photographer," Zayat says. "Over the past years, I have been able to transmit many humanitarian stories worldwide, which gives me the motivation and strength to continue my work," he adds.
Image: Mohannad Zayat/OCHA
Precious water pools in craters made by bombs
In 2013, this Aleppo boy drinks water from a destroyed pipe out of a bomb crater. "Some people wrote comments criticizing the unreality of the image, and saying that the photographer should have provided clean water to the child instead of exploiting his image," Muzaffar Salman says. "I believe that any change of reality begins with seeing it as it is and not as we would like it to be," he adds.
Image: Muzaffar Salman/OCHA
Residents leave the city of Ghoula
A man pulls his child in a suitcase as a family flees the city of Ghoula in March 2018. "The war has not only changed Syria, but it has also changed our way of seeing and the way we photograph in order to share humanitarian messages with the world," the photographer Omar Sanadiki says. "My dream is that one day, even after 50 years, my daughters, Asli and Zoya, will show my pictures to the world."
Image: Omar Sanadiki/OCHA
A cup of coffee in Douma
A woman and her husband drink coffee at their home in Douma, on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, in 2017. "Umm Mohammed was one of the most special people I met," photographer Sameer Al-Doumy says. "She got badly injured and just as she was recovering, her husband was hit by an airstrike and lost his ability to walk. ... Her love for her husband was evident and greater than anything."
Image: Sameer Al-Doumy/OCHA/AFP
A woman mourns her son in the Daraa region
"On many occasions, I couldn't photograph what I saw because of the volume of pain and oppression in front of me," Mohamad Abazeed says. "When I photographed this woman, who was visiting the grave of her son on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in 2017, she was crying and kissing the grave. And I was crying with her and wiping my tears to be able to hold myself together and take the photo."
Image: Mohamad Abazeed/OCHA
The child who lost her leg in a mortar attack
Five-year-old Aya waits for her father to fix dinner in Damascus in December 2013. She was on her way to school when she was hit by a mortar. "I was wearing my brown shoes," Aya told the photographer Carole Alfarah. "The shoe just flew and my leg flew with it. My leg has gone."
Image: Carole Alfarah/OCHA
A makeshift parkour course
In Kafr Nouran, near Aleppo, parkour athletes make constructive use of destroyed buildings in September 2020. Anas Alkharboutli's work shows the ways in which life has continued in various ways in the rubble.
Image: Anas Alkharboutli/OCHA/picture alliance/dpa
A new chance near Idlib?
"I took this photo in 2020 in the town of Balyun, south of Idlib, of a family returning home after the ceasefire agreement," the photographer Ali Haj Suleiman says. "I had mixed feelings of sadness and joy at the same time. Joy, because I saw people returning to their homes and they were happy, but at the same time I felt sadness because, myself, I could not go back to my village and home."
