UN: New Syria authorities sending ‘constructive’ signals

The Bashar Assaa’s was marked by the mass jailing and killing of suspected dissidents, and nearly 14 years of civil war that left more than 500,000 people dead and millions displaced. (Reuters)

• Since Bashar Assad’s ouster, the UNHCR had had ‘some contact with the interim authorities’

GENEVA: Syria’s new interim authorities have asked the United Nations refugee agency to remain in the country following the ouster of president Bashar Assad, sending a “constructive” signal, the organization said Friday.
Assad fled Syria on Sunday after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group and its allies, which ended five decades of repressive rule by Assad’s family.
The rule was marked by the mass jailing and killing of suspected dissidents, and nearly 14 years of civil war that left more than 500,000 people dead and millions displaced.
“The needs are absolutely huge,” Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, told reporters in Geneva by video link from Damascus.
Since Assad’s ouster, the agency had had “some contact with the interim authorities,” he said, adding: “the initial signals that they are sending us are constructive.”
The authorities were saying “they want us to stay in Syria, that they appreciate the work that we have been doing now for many years, that they need us to continue doing that work,” Vargas Llosa said.
Most importantly, he said the interim authorities had indicated “they will provide us the necessary security to carry out those activities.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile highlighted the towering task ahead to help Syrian families whose loved ones disappeared under the Assad rule.
In recent years, “we have been approached by tens of thousands of families who have come to us with what we call a tracing request,” said Stephan Sakalian, who heads the organization’s Syria delegation.
The ICRC has documented over 35,000 cases of disappearances, he told reporters from Damascus, adding the true number was likely far higher.
The organization is calling for the protection and preservation of archives found in detention facilities and elsewhere, as well as of burial sites.
“What we need now is of course a more structured and an urgent discussion with the interim government,” Sakalian said.
He said ICRC wanted to help determine “the best way to coordinate these efforts to preserve not only the documents but also the mass graves” and other information that could help “families in the future to identify the whereabouts and the fate of their beloved ones.”