There were surreal scenes earleir this week in Damascus as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi met with Syria’s dictator, President Bashar al-Assad to discuss Lebanon’s refugee problem.
Since 2011 Bashar al-Assad retained his power in Syria through a brutal war imposed on his population by his army and foreign proxies including Hezbollah, the Iranians and the Russians. Throughout this war, Assad displaced up to 13 million Syrians, and many of these also fled the repression of his own government.
Up to one million people from Lebanon have been displaced due to Israeli bombing of Lebanon since last year, with 185,000 of these refugees, many of them Syrians, fleeing to Syria on foot. Israel has also bombed roads leading to Syria, forcing many refugees to change their routes while fleeing on foot.
Bashar al-Assad, who has an international arrest warrant against him by a French court for gassing up to 1000 people in Douma and Ghouta, is currently making extensive effort to rehabilitate his image and normalise ties with foreign governments. He remains one of the biggest mass murderers alive today.
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