Geagea: Normalization With Syria Aims at Lifting Assad

Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea during an interview with Reuters, October 31, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea during an interview with Reuters, October 31, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Geagea: Normalization With Syria Aims at Lifting Assad

Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea during an interview with Reuters, October 31, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea during an interview with Reuters, October 31, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea accused some parties of using the file of the displaced in order to normalize relations with Syria and revive the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad.

In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Geagea said: “We are currently witnessing the biggest political scheme by blaming us of impeding the return of displaced persons to their country.”

Emphasizing that the LF supported the unconditional return of the refugees, he said that the main reason for normalizing relations with Syria under the pretext of resolving the displaced file was aimed at reviving the rule of Assad.

He noted that the Syrian regime president “does not appear to be willing to secure their return at a time when Syria is undergoing a demographic change.”

Geagea stressed that Iran was working to reinforce Assad, and that Hezbollah was seeking to market this strategy, “for the simple reason that Tehran has invested in the regime and spent billions of dollars… and therefore cannot allow it to weaken or to be lost due to the negative repercussions on Iran’s internal arena.”

“We will maintain communication with the international community to secure safe areas in Syria,” he said.

The LF leader underlined that the organized campaign to normalize relations between the two countries came in the context of the previous campaign led by Foreign Affairs Minister Gebran Bassil to invite Syria to attend the Arab Economic Summit hosted by Lebanon.

“The pretext of normalizing the relations between the two countries as a condition for the return of the displaced is an open attempt to use this file to lift the Assad regime; otherwise Assad would have already invited the displaced to return,” Geagea remarked, adding that the Syrian president was the first to assert that their presence in hosting countries comforted him internally.



UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
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UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)

More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, including 800,000 people displaced inside the country and 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.

“Since the fall of the regime in Syria, we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.

“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.

Last January, the UN's high commissioner for refugees urged the international community to back Syria's reconstruction efforts to facilitate the return of millions of refugees.

“Lift the sanctions, open up space for reconstruction. If we don't do it now at the beginning of the transition, we waste a lot of time,” Grandi told a press conference in Ankara, after returning from a trip in Lebanon and Syria.

At a meeting in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Türkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”

The meeting's final statement also pledged support for Syria's new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”

Meanwhile, AFP reported on Tuesday that displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods in Homs, where rebels first took up arms to fight Assad's crackdown on protests in 2011, only to find them in ruins.

In Homs, the Syrian military had besieged and bombarded opposition areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin was killed in a bombing in 2012.

“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.

“We removed the rubble, laid a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.

“Despite the destruction, we're happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”

Duaa’s husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.