Lebanon Mourns Jean Obeid, a Man of Wisdom, Diplomacy

Former Minister and MP Jean Obeid passed away on Monday at the age of 82. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Former Minister and MP Jean Obeid passed away on Monday at the age of 82. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Lebanon Mourns Jean Obeid, a Man of Wisdom, Diplomacy

Former Minister and MP Jean Obeid passed away on Monday at the age of 82. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Former Minister and MP Jean Obeid passed away on Monday at the age of 82. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Lebanon mourned the passing away of former Minister and MP Jean Obeid, who died on Monday at the age of 82, due to health complications caused by COVID-19.

Politicians and figures from various political blocs and parties hailed Obeid’s wisdom and mediation role that he assumed since the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war.

President Michel Aoun described Obeid as a man of a wise and generous journey, at the political and national levels. He also praised his role in the political life, as deputy and minister, and the national stances he took during his career.

Speaker Nabih Berri mourned the former minister, saying in a statement: “With great sadness and sorrow, Lebanon and the House of Parliament have lost a national legislative figure who devoted his life working relentlessly to preserve Lebanon, the nation and the message.”

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said that with the departure of Obeid, the country has lost “a noble man who enriched political life with his wisdom and culture, sincere patriotism, generous morals and vitality in inventing ideas that protect Lebanon and coexistence.”

Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, for his part, said: “My friend Jean Obeid passed away peacefully, just as he lived for years, torn up over the situation in Lebanon.”

“Late Jean Obeid was a symbol of moderation and coexistence,” Diab stressed, adding that Lebanon will miss “a great intellectual, who was well-versed in religion, politics, Arabism and history.”

The head of the Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, described Obeid as “the last of the wise men to depart from Lebanon – a country that is mired in savagery, assassinations, and the three obstructing forces of ignorance, hatred and local and regional obscurantism.”

“The patriotic and Arab man with dignity and morals is gone. He considered that a person has no value away from the love of Christ and the justice of the Prophet. Beloved Jean Obeid, a friend of Kamal Jumblatt and Palestine, has passed away,” he added.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.