The harrowing scenes of civilians desperately fleeing an Israeli onslaught on Lebanon for Syria have been seized on by European anti-immigrant parties to claim regime-held areas are now a safe place of return for refugees.
Beyond the border though, nine in ten returnees have reported threats or shakedowns by Syrian security forces, while four in five of those fleeing the war are women and children, indicating the grave risks men in particular face of being pressganged into the military or forcibly disappeared by intelligence services, the fate of tens of thousands of suspected dissidents in Syria.
Ultimately, it is not that Syria is a safe place, just that Lebanon – where 60 people are killed every day in Israeli bombing – is more dangerous, but this has not stopped pro-Hezbollah elements from reportedly coercing Syrians into leaving the country, sometimes seizing refugees from the streets and dropping them off at the border.
Lighting the fuse
Bashar Al-Assad’s pyromantic strategy from the onset of the 2011 revolution has been to light the fuse and wait for international outrage to subside, knowing the pressures from the war on neighbouring states and Europe would eventually force them to concede to his rule over Syria.
Assad’s ‘waiting game’ now appears to be bearing fruit with the dictator welcomed back into the Arab League and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spearheading a drive to reset frozen EU-Syria relations, with refugees a key motivation behind this endeavour.
The European far-right has seized on the exodus from war-torn Lebanon as ‘proof’ Syria is now a safe place of return while promoting a revisionist take on the Syrian war to absolve Assad of blame.
Meloni recently spoke to the leaders of Arab states with their own substantial Syrian refugee populations, notably Jordan and Lebanon, with one surreptitious remark featured in each of her statements – Italy is working on “creating the conditions” for the “voluntary, safe, sustainable and dignified” repatriation of Syrian refugees.Â
Tangible outreach by Rome has in part been achieved via aid following the 2023 Syria-Turkey earthquake, with Italy about the only European country to provide direct support to the Syrian regime.
Despite a downscale in fighting, nobody could imagine Syria as a safe place for refugees to return to, overseen by a ruthless autocrat who presided over the mass slaughter of 500,000-plus Syrians and disappeared 160,000 more, while income levels have dropped to all-time lows amid a wave of corruption, insecurity, and Israeli violence.
Probably the most grave dangers returnees would face is from the state, as witnessed when Syrian activist Mazen Al-Hamada arrived at Damascus Airport from Germany in 2020, never to be heard of again.
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Normalisation drive
Despite this, an Italian ambassador to Damascus was appointed last week while in July eight EU states, mostly headed by populist right-wing governments, called on Brussels to review frozen ties with Syria, highlighting the concerning steps taken by European states toward the rehabilitation of the Assad regime.
“I can’t speak for all Syrians but many of us view these actions as a profound betrayal, not because we trusted or believed in these governments but because the level of violence is beyond comprehension,” said Wafa Mustafa, an activist and daughter of Ali Mustafa who was forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime in 2013.
“For Europe and the West, Syrians – like so many colonised peoples before – are expendable, mere collateral in a global game of power. The decision to normalise relations with Assad undermines struggles for freedom and justice, signalling that violence can be overlooked when it aligns with strategic goals.”
Experts warn that the European Commission’s Southern Neighbourhood policy – which entails outreach to repressive MENA regimes on issues such as migration and security – seemingly ignores the root causes of the EU’s ‘migration crisis’ i.e. the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests by dictators such as Bashar Al-Assad, which forced thousands to flee their homes due to the threats of detention or death.
This coincides with a wave of far-right and populist victories in Europe, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in local elections and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, who have all demonised Syrian refugees and Islam in general.
This is the point where Europe’s far right, ‘secular’ Arab dictators, and the so-called anti-imperialist left converge: Assad is engaged in a necessary war against Islamic extremism which threatens both the Arab world and Europe, and Syrians seeking democracy and human rights risks undoing this security order.
“The rhetoric of not only far-right parties but also all others, at this point, frames us as threats, not people seeking refuge. For me, it echoes the same dynamics of oppression that forced many Syrians and non-Syrians to flee our homes,” said Mustafa.
“Trapped between authoritarianism in Syria and exclusion and repression abroad, we see Europe’s policies as maintaining a system that marginalises displaced communities instead of addressing the root causes of our suffering, and this reality underscores how deeply ingrained systems of exclusion and control continue to marginalise those seeking safety.”
The emboldened European right now view Assad as a key partner in their mission to expel refugees who fled his barrel bombs, chemical weapons, and death squads despite absolutely no improvement in the human rights situation in Syria.
“Normalisation is evident and reflects a historic pattern where power politics trumps justice and rehabilitating Assad is consistent with Europe’s history of backing oppressive rulers when it serves their interests, no matter the cost to human lives,” Mustafa told The New Arab.
“My message is this: there’s no option but prioritising people’s dignity over political convenience – aligning with oppressive regimes doesn’t build ‘stability’, it perpetuates suffering and injustice.”
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Human rights conundrum
EU outreach goes beyond mere rhetorical flirtations with ‘fact-finding missions’ to Syria established to investigate whether the country is a safe place of return, with the reports likely to be seized on by populist right governments to push through harsh anti-immigration policies, said Munqeth Othman Agha, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute.
“The fact-finding missions might affect recent arrivals, those originating from regions deemed ‘safe’ by host governments or those who visited Syria in recent years,” Othman Agha told The New Arab.
“Revoking or rejecting asylum applications might have severe consequences on refugees, stripping them of rights to residency, work, and education. These groups might be forced to return to Assad-controlled areas, where they are subject to arrest, discrimination, or dire living conditions.”
The EU’s normalisation process with the Assad regime is built on two principles, said Othman Agha: firstly, to dispute the role Assad played in displacing millions of Syrians, and second, to prioritise European security interests over principles such as human rights and democracy, supposedly the bedrock of the European project.
Regardless of the morals and lives at stake, European outreach to the Syrian regime on the refugee issue will likely be as futile as attempts by Arab states to embrace Assad after years of opposition in the hope of stemming the export of the drug captagon from Syria and shift Damascus away from Iran’s sphere of influence.
“It is obvious that the regime is currently not interested in facilitating large-scale refugee returns due to several economic and political reasons,” Othman Agha said.
“Instead, it seeks to leverage the normalisation momentum to ease Western sanctions and secure greater humanitarian and reconstruction funds – without making meaningful concessions, such as ensuring safe refugee returns, addressing human rights violations, or combating drug production and trafficking.”
Yet Italy’s diplomatic push has been years in the making, said Veronica Bellintani, head of the International Law Support Unit at the Syrian Legal Development Programme, with an alleged visit to Rome by Syrian regime security head Ali Mamlouk in 2018 – a notorious figure sanctioned for allegedly overseeing industrial-scale torture in Syria – highlighting Europe’s priority of its security, immigration, and economic interests over human rights and liberty.
 “It is not by having any agreements with dictatorships that you will stop people leaving their countries, if anything it is the opposite, any entrenchment of human rights abuses (in the Arab world) will force people to find other ways to escape, this policy is unsustainable,” Bellintani told The New Arab.
“As is clear in the history of migration it is not by blocking asylum seekers from leaving their countries that you ‘defeat’ illegal immigration but by addressing the root causes. So you are not going to stop Syrians from leaving by collaborating with Assad – the root cause of the problem in Syria is the regime itself.”
Paul McLoughlin is the Head of News at The New ArabÂ
Follow him on Twitter:Â @PaullMcLoughlin
