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Baghdad Plans Meetings to Discuss Syria

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani chairing a cabinet meeting (Prime minister’s office)
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani chairing a cabinet meeting (Prime minister’s office)
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Baghdad Plans Meetings to Discuss Syria

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani chairing a cabinet meeting (Prime minister’s office)
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani chairing a cabinet meeting (Prime minister’s office)

Iraq’s embassy in Damascus resumed operations on Thursday, with Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein announcing plans for key discussions on Syria’s situation.

This comes after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani called on Arab countries to support Syria’s people, following the recent fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Speaking at the Arab Health Ministers' Council meeting in Baghdad, Sudani highlighted Iraq’s ongoing support for Palestinians and Lebanese.

“Iraq has always led efforts to help the Palestinian and Lebanese people, and now we must focus on addressing the painful health crisis affecting human dignity and providing aid to those lacking medical care due to the siege and violence,” he said.

Iraq has reaffirmed its support for the Syrian people, stressing the importance of Syria’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and the protection of its institutions.

Sudani also called for civil peace and respect for the Syrian people's wishes.

Although Iraq considers the situation in Syria an internal matter, Baghdad has remained silent on messages from Syria's new government, including those from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani and Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad al-Bashir, who said they were in contact with Iraq.

Iraq, however, has shown its willingness to help Syria for the second time in two days. Besides his comments at the Arab Health Ministers’ Council on Thursday, Sudani reiterated Iraq’s readiness to assist during a meeting with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius the night before.

Sudani stressed the role of the international community in supporting Syria’s stability and security and emphasized that Syrians should decide their future. He also highlighted the importance of representing all Syrian groups in any new government to ensure lasting peace and security.

On his part, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein announced on Thursday that meetings will be held in Baghdad to discuss the situation in Syria, focusing on diplomatic efforts to promote regional stability.

At a press conference in Basra, Hussein said, “The situation in Syria and the region is very complex. Iraq has launched several initiatives and is hosting diplomatic activities to find solutions for security, stability, and crisis management.”

He confirmed that talks will be held in Baghdad or other locations, with a plan to discuss the Syrian crisis. Hussein stressed Iraq's role in addressing key issues for Syria’s stability, aiming for a political solution that includes all Syrian communities.

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Arab World

In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
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In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP

School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.
And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim -- freed from jail this month when opposition factions toppled Bashar al-Assad's government -- hobbles through the rubble.
"Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max," 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj told AFP.
Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometer (519-acre) "refugee camp" for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.
Shattered city
Like similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-storey concrete housing blocks and businesses.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria's conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees.
Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.
With Assad's fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad's persecution.
The former Free Syrian Army opposition fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad's rule ended on December 8.
Ajaj's face is still paler than those of his neighbors, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings.
At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralyzed him -- he thinks on purpose -- but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell.
"My neighbors and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don't sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread," he said.
"Yesterday, we had bread leftovers," he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.
"My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: 'Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me'."
As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria's ousted leader fled to Russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad's rule.
Ajaj's ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad's war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.
Bullets lodged
The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.
Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.
Haitham Hassan al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands.
His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad's forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.
Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.
"They called my mother after they 'killed' me, so she went to the airport road, towards Najha. They told her 'This is the dog's body, the deserter'," he said.
"They didn't wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God's power, it's unbelievable, I took a deep breath."
After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.