Syria's Controversial New Leader Comes to Berlin
Police are readying for protests Monday as interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa arrives for a rescheduled lunch with Merz – presumably to talk about their shared interest in relocating Germany's Syrian refugees.
Monday, March 31
Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, will touch down in Berlin on Monday morning for an official state visit. This meeting of the two leaders occurs as Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative government pushes to encourage Syrians in Germany — of which there are around 1.3 million — to return home.
Sharaa is a former al-Qaeda commander who founded the group's Syrian affiliate before breaking with the organisation in 2016 and going on to lead the coalition that toppled ex-Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last year. On Monday, he is scheduled to lunch with Merz at the Chancellery. This visit initially supposed to happen Berlin in January, but Sharaa had to cancel the trip because of bitter fighting and fragile ceasefire talks with Kurdish militia groups.
The agenda for Merz’s chat will centre on the repatriation of Syrians (presumably both voluntary and involuntary, given harsh comments over the past year about sending Syrians “home” from many of Merz’s CDU colleagues), as well as German aid for rebuilding the country, which was devastated by more than a decade of bloody civil war.
“Our interest is in seeing Syria rebuilt in a stable and prosperous way, also with the help of the many, many Syrians who came to Germany and Europe during the civil war and found refuge here,” Merz’s chief spokesman, Stefan Kornelius, said of the visit, according to rbb. Currently, the capital is home to an estimated 60,000 Syrians.
"Ahmed al-Sharaa bears responsibility for numerous human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity."
Police are anticipating a number of demonstrations around the visit, particularly from Berlin’s large Kurdish population. Sharaa’s forces have been battling militias from Syria’s Kurdish minority, who carved out a largely autonomous area of the country during the long civil war.
Thousands joined protests in January against Sharaa – despite his cancelled trip – and numerous demonstrations have already been registered with Berlin police around Monday’s visit. The Kurdish Community of Germany (KGD) group denounced Sharaa's visit in a statement quoted by rbb, saying he “bears responsibility for numerous human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity” and that Sharaa’s jihadist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was long classified as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and other entities.
Police have issued orders restricting demonstrations and cordoning off large areas around the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Mitte until Monday night, as well as similar but shorter bans around Bellevue Palace and the Chancellery. Knives will also be banned in those areas.
