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Chinese Citizen Missing in Syria’s Suwaida

 Visa entry of Chinese citizen Han Mingyi who went missing in Suwaida, south Syria (Suwaida 24)
 Visa entry of Chinese citizen Han Mingyi who went missing in Suwaida, south Syria (Suwaida 24)
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Chinese Citizen Missing in Syria’s Suwaida

 Visa entry of Chinese citizen Han Mingyi who went missing in Suwaida, south Syria (Suwaida 24)
 Visa entry of Chinese citizen Han Mingyi who went missing in Suwaida, south Syria (Suwaida 24)

A Chinese citizen on a visit to Syria reportedly went missing on Monday during a trip to the city of Suwaida in southern Syria.
“The weather is nice and comfortable” is the last message a Chinese national texted to his friend in Damascus, informing him that he had arrived in Suwaida.
All contact was later cut off with the tourist, according to activists in the Syrian province who said that the Chinese citizen Han Mingyi, arrived in Suwaida last Monday, then disappeared.
The Suwayda 24 news website published a photo of the tourist’s entry visa to Syria with his personal data.
Born in 2003, Mingyi was a guest in a hotel owned by a Chinese person in the capital, Damascus.
The tourist said he was traveling to the province of Daraa, but hours after he left Damascus, Mingyi texted the hotel owner and informed him that he had arrived in Suwaida.
All contacts with him were then lost.
A source from the security services in the province told the news website “there was no report of a missing Chinese tourist in Suwaida or Daraa until this hour.”
The source explained that tourists usually travel in tour groups, and are under security surveillance.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said contact with the Chinese tourist in Suwaida has been lost for days, also listing reports about his kidnapping.
The Observatory noted that the Chinese embassy received a report of the disappearance of the tourist while he was leaving the capital towards southern Syria.
It added that it lost contact with him in the Suwaida province after the man made a phone call with the “hotel owner.”
Despite the presence of security checkpoints, chaos reigns in cities of southern Syria amid the spread of armed gangs, kidnapping, robbery and car theft gangs.
Sources in Damascus told Asharq Al-Awsat that despite the fragility of security in Syria, Europeans and Chinese nationals did not stop visiting the country during the war, but that the majority of them are employees of international organizations and companies.
“During the war, we saw Chinese employees visiting different Syrian areas and sightseeing on the sidelines of their missions,” the sources said.
They said China has already expressed its hopes to play an active role in solving the Syrian crisis, and had appointed a special envoy to Syria in 2016.
However, the sources added that China's ambitions were hit by instability and international economic sanctions on Damascus that continue to impede investment.

 

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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)

US forces have pulled out of two more bases in northeastern Syria, visiting Reuters reporters found, accelerating a troop drawdown that the commander of US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces said was allowing a resurgence of ISIS.

Reuters reporters who visited the two bases in the past week found them mostly deserted, both guarded by small contingents of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the Kurdish-led military group that Washington has backed in the fight against ISIS for a decade.

Cameras used on bases occupied by the US-led military coalition had been taken down, and razor wire on the outer perimeters had begun to sag.

A Kurdish politician who lives on one base said there were no longer US troops there. SDF guards at the second base said troops had left recently but declined to say when. The Pentagon declined to comment.

It is the first confirmation on the ground by reporters that the US has withdrawn from Al-Wazir and Tel Baydar bases in Hasaka province. It brings to at least four the number of bases in Syria US troops have left since President Donald Trump took office.

Trump’s administration said this month it will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight in parts of northeastern Syria that the SDF controls. The New York Times reported in April that troops might be reduced from 2,000 to 500 in the drawdown.

The SDF did not respond to questions about the current number of troops and open US bases in northeastern Syria.

But SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who spoke to Reuters at another US base, Al Shadadi, said the presence of a few hundred troops on one base would be "not enough" to contain the threat of ISIS.

"The threat of ISIS has significantly increased recently. But this is the US military’s plan. We’ve known about it for a long time ... and we’re working with them to make sure there are no gaps and we can maintain pressure on ISIS," he said.

Abdi spoke to Reuters on Friday, hours after Israel launched its air war on Iran. He declined to comment on how the new Israel-Iran war would affect Syria, saying simply that he hoped it would not spill over there and that he felt safe on a US base.

Hours after the interview, three Iranian-made missiles targeted the Al Shadadi base and were shot down by US defense systems, two SDF security sources said.

ISIS ACTIVE IN SYRIAN CITIES

ISIS ruled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017 during Syria’s civil war, imposing a vision of religious rule under which it beheaded locals in city squares, sex-trafficked members of the Yazidi minority and executed foreign journalists and aid workers.

The group, from its strongholds in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, also launched deadly attacks in European and Middle Eastern countries.

A US-led military Coalition of more than 80 countries waged a yearslong campaign to defeat the group and end its territorial control, supporting Iraqi forces and the SDF.

But ISIS has been reinvigorated since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of separate opposition factions.

Abdi said ISIS cells had become active in several Syrian cities, including Damascus, and that a group of foreign extremists who once battled the Syrian regime had joined its ranks. He did not elaborate.

He said ISIS had seized weapons and ammunition from Syrian regime depots in the chaos after Assad's fall.

Several Kurdish officials told Reuters that ISIS had already begun moving more openly around US bases which had recently been shuttered, including near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, once strongholds for the extremist group.

In areas the SDF controls east of the Euphrates River, ISIS has waged a series of attacks and killed at least 10 SDF fighters and security forces, Abdi said. Attacks included a roadside bomb targeting a convoy of oil tankers on a road near the US base where he gave the interview.