European Union countries will continue to back Syria’s new leadership through both financial aid and sanctions relief despite an outbreak of sectarian violence threatening the country’s stability, the bloc’s foreign ministers said Monday.
Germany led the charge by pledging €300 million in support for food, health and other essential services for Syria’s population, as the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said the bloc will continue to lift sanctions against Syria.
“As Europeans, we stand together for the people of Syria, for a free and peaceful Syria,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock added ahead of an annual donor conference for Syria in Brussels.
In a lightning revolution late last year, Syrian rebels — led by former al-Qaeda commander Ahmed al-Sharaa — overthrew Bashar Assad’s decades-long dictatorship, ushering in a fragile new system of governance in a country wracked by religious and ethnic rivalries.
In recent days, gunmen from the Alawite Islamic minority, affiliated with Assad, targeted Syrian security personnel, sparking retaliatory and extrajudicial killings by forces allied with al-Sharaa’s new government. Thousands of Alawites have since fled, including to neighboring Lebanon, while hundreds of Alawite civilians have also been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Kallas insisted the bloc needed to double down on its support for Syrian, while striking a note of caution. “The violence outbreak is really worrying,” she said.
“It shows that hope in Syria is really hanging by a thread. This shows that we need to do more to really show that Syria is going in the right direction,” she added.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani is joining the aid conference in Brussels, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kallas and EU foreign ministers.
A senior EU official said last week they hoped additional funding would help Syria “turn a page” on 14 years of civil war, amid concerns that a freeze on international aid from the United States could worsen the situation on the ground.
The EU has spearheaded efforts to restore diplomatic ties with Syria in recent months, including by lifting sanctions originally imposed against Assad’s regime, with several leaders pushing to send Syrian migrants who lack legal status in Europe back to their home country.
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