19.05.2023
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Saudi Arabia for Friday’s Arab League summit, his first since Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese website)Syrian President Bashar al-AssadWill speak at the Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia on Friday (May 19). This is the first time Assad has attended a summit of the Arab League since Syria was suspended from membership in the Arab League in 2011.
Last week Assad was formally invited to attend the 32nd Arab League summit held in the western city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. He looked relaxed and happy as he stepped onto the tarmac at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah on Thursday.
Prince Aziz (Badr bin Sultan), the deputy governor of the holy city of Mecca, along with Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary-general of the Arab League, and several local officials formally welcomed Assad .
Syria bounces back from isolation
The 22-member Arab League suspended Syria’s membership that same year after Assad’s government brutally crushed anti-government protests in 2011.
The League of Arab States held a special meeting of foreign ministers on May 7 this year and agreed to restore Syria’s membership. Now that Assad’s return to the Arab League marks a major symbolic victory for Damascus, Syrian authorities are working to restore ties with countries in the region.
According to United Nations war crimes investigators,Assad’s government forces accused of using chemical weapons in more than a decade-long civil warbut the Syrian government denied this.
Syria’s ten-year war
Shattered Memories in Rakka
A woman pushes a baby carriage through the destroyed city of Raqqa in 2019. Photographer Abood Hamam said: “In 2017, I started photographing my hometown. There are memories of me in every corner here. They destroyed all of this. My photos will one day become historical documents .”
Syria’s ten-year war
One picture, endless pain
Idlib, 2020: Two sons mourn the death of their mother. Photographer Ghaith Alsayed himself was only 17 when the war began. His brother was also killed in an explosion. He said: “When I took this picture, all the horror of my brother being killed in the bombing came back, and suddenly I cried too.”
Syria’s ten-year war
lost in the rubble
Binish, April 2020. A woman holds her daughter by the hand. In Mohannad Zayat’s photographs, they are tiny creatures in the desert of ruins. They are trying to find shelter in a destroyed school. It’s a dangerous refuge, but better than nothing. There are no vacant tents in the nearby camp for displaced persons.
Syria’s ten-year war
drinking from a crater
Aleppo, June 2013: A water main was destroyed in an attack. The boy immediately drank from the full crater. Photographer Muzzafar Salman: “At that time, some people said that the photo was not real. They also said that I should give the children clean water. But I think that if you want to change the reality, you must first show the reality.”
Syria’s ten-year war
Escape from the Ghouta
In March 2018, fleeing from the ancient tower, a man packed his child in a suitcase and went to the exit leading to the road to freedom. Photographer Omar Sanadiki wrote: “After all, the war in Syria has not only changed the country. It has changed us too – how we see people, how we take pictures to send a humanitarian message to the world.”
Syria’s ten-year war
survive, hang on
Damascus suburbs, 2017: Umm Mohammed and her husband sit in their destroyed house – as if nothing happened. Photographer Sameer Al-Doumy said: “This woman was one of the most impressive people I have ever met. She was seriously injured and, shortly after, her husband was also seriously injured. She stayed at home to take care of him. To me, her resilience reflects who Syrians really are.”
Syria’s ten-year war
mother mourning son
In 2017, Daraa area. Eid al-Fitr this year is nothing to celebrate. Photographer Mohamad Abazeed recounts: “In 2017, I accompanied this woman to visit her son’s grave on the first day of Eid al-Fitr. I cried myself, but I wiped my tears so that I can still take pictures.”
Syria’s ten-year war
childhood in a wheelchair
December 2013, Damascus. Five-year-old Aya waits in a wheelchair for her father to cook for her. On the way to school, a shell hit her. “I was wearing brown shoes that day. First I saw the shoes fly through the air, and then I saw my legs fly with them,” she told The Guardian.
Syria’s ten-year war
syrian stuntman
The town of Kafr Nouran near Aleppo. Syrian track and field athletes have turned the ruins into a daring acrobatic training ground. Anas Alkharboutli’s photos show that extreme sports and stunts can be practiced even in concrete ruins.
Syria’s ten-year war
hope for a new beginning
In 2020, after a ceasefire was signed, the family returned to their home in southern Idlib. Ali Haj Suleiman had mixed feelings when he took this photo: “I am happy that these people have returned to their hometowns. At the same time, I am sad because I am also displaced – I cannot go back.”
Syria’s ten-year war
ancient roman heritage
This is also Syria at war: the ancient Roman amphitheater of Bosra in Daraa was soaked by a torrential rain in 2018. (Note: All photos in this gallery were provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but the accuracy of information from third parties cannot be guaranteed. Cooperation with them does not imply that the United Nations was involved in the photography.)
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries have supported anti-Assad rebel groups for years, but the Syrian army regained control of much of the country years ago. Since March 2011, Syria’s civil war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced nearly 14 million, half the country’s pre-war population.
Western assessment of Assad and the Arab League
The United States and Germany have expressed opposition to normalizing relations with Assad. “We do not support normalizing relations with the Assad regime, nor do we support our partners doing so,” Deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on Thursday. But Patel added that the U.S. has “Some shared goals,” such as bringing home former U.S. Marine and journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012.
(Reuters, AFP, AP)
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