Baerbock’s visit came after sectarian massacres earlier this month claimed more than 1,500 lives on Syria’s Mediterranean coast [Abdulkerim Muhammed/Anadolu via Getty]
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said after meeting Syria’s interim leaders Thursday that they must bring under control and hold accountable extremist groups behind sectarian massacres committed this month.
Baerbock during her one-day visit to Damascus also reopened the German embassy, which closed in 2012 amid the Syrian civil war, on her second trip there since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad over three months ago.
Her visit came after sectarian massacres earlier this month claimed more than 1,500 lives on Syria’s Mediterranean coast – the heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority.
Groups allied to the new authorities have been accused of participating in the massacres.
Speaking after talks with interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and other officials, she said that “it is imperative that extremist groups in their ranks are brought under control and those responsible for crimes are held accountable”.
“Any attempt at renewed escalation must be prevented,” Baerbock told a press conference.
She stressed that “the atrocities that have recently occurred on the coast are not only a warning signal but… show how much the country is on a knife edge”.
Baerbock described the situation in Syria as “particularly volatile”, with the country as it seeks stability after years of civil war.
She said numerous actors inside and outside the country were trying “to torpedo this peaceful political process”.
“As Europeans, we will not support a resurgence of Islamist structures,” she said, urging the new authorities to create a power-sharing system where all groups, including Druze, Alawites, Christians and others, “also feel part of a new, shared Syria”.
The participation of women would be “a key indicator of this,” she said.
“Our common goal is that Syria never falls back into civil war.”
She said badly needed private investment “will only come when a stable, functioning state guarantees that there will never be violence and chaos again, and that people will never have to flee again”.
Germany on Monday announced 300 million euros ($325 million) for reconstruction aid in Syria, as part of a donor conference that gathered total pledges of 5.8 billion euros.
Embassy reopens
Baerbock earlier in the day officially reopened her country’s embassy, and a ministry source said an initially small diplomatic team would be working in Damascus.
“Germany has a paramount interest in a stable Syria,” the source said. “We can better contribute to the difficult task of stabilisation on the ground.”
Consular affairs and visas would continue to be handled from the Lebanese capital Beirut for practical reasons and due to the security situation in Syria.
Among EU countries, the Italian embassy has already resumed operations in Damascus.
France has raised its flag on its embassy building but not yet conducted consular activities there. Spain also announced it had raised its flag over its embassy in mid-January.
The ministry source said that with Germany’s renewed diplomatic presence, “we can build important diplomatic contacts and thus, among other things, push for an inclusive political transition process that takes into account the interests of all population groups”.
The source added that “we can now also once again engage in important work with civil society. And we can respond directly and immediately to serious negative developments.”
In the days after March 6, Syria’s coast was gripped by the worst wave of violence since Assad’s overthrow.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,500 civilians, most of them Alawites, the minority to which Assad belongs.
Since Assad’s overthrow, Israel has also launched hundreds of strikes on military sites in Syria, arguing the weapons must not fall into the hands of the new authorities whom it considers jihadists.
It has also deployed troops to a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the strategic Golan Heights.
Baerbock said in a statement that “the influence of foreign actors has brought nothing but chaos to Syria in the past.
“Even today, attacks on Syrian territory threaten the country’s stability. All sides are called upon to exercise maximum military restraint and not to torpedo the intra-Syrian unification process.”
