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Sarkozy slammed after call for action on Syria

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has infuriated the current French government with a call for "rapid international action" to end the crisis in Syria.

Published: 9 August 2012 15:50 CEST

Sarkozy slammed after call for action on Syria

WEF

Sarkozy, one of the principal architects of the NATO air campaign in Libya last year, came under fire Thursday after suggesting that there were "major similarities" with the current situation in Syria, implying military action was also an option to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

It was the right-wing leader's first public comment on the Syria crisis since he lost the presidential election in May and it was immediately slammed
as irresponsible meddling by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

"I'm astonished that Mr Sarkozy wants to start a polemic on such a grave subject," Fabius said before questioning the ex-president's motives.

"It is not what one would expect from a former president. Is it because he does not want to be forgotten?"

Fabius said Syria's location at the heart of the Middle East and the country's weapons made the situation there "fundamentally different" to the
one in Libya prior to the NATO-backed overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi.

"The differences are so evident that no country has demanded nor desires military intervention," Fabius said.

Sarkozy's return to the frontline of French political life came after a telephone call with one of the leaders of the anti-Assad Syrian National
Council, Abdel Basset Sayda, on Wednesday.

In a statement, Sarkozy said he and Sayda had agreed on the "gravity of the Syrian crisis and the need for rapid action by the international community to
avoid slaughter."

The remarks were widely criticised in the French press, which recalled that Sarkozy had not himself advocated military intervention despite his final year
in office coinciding with the Syrian uprising.

Sarkozy had been widely expected to withdraw from French political life in the aftermath of his defeat by the Socialist Hollande in May.

The former president lost his immunity from prosecution in June and is expected to be questioned soon by an examining magistrate looking into
allegations that Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign was illegally financed by Liliane Bettencourt, France's richest woman.

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Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021.

Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. Photo: Thibault Savary / AFP

Alkale, who until recently ran his own small transportation company in Denmark, found out in March he wasn’t allowed to stay in the Scandinavian country where he has lived as a refugee since 2014, as Copenhagen now considers it safe for Syrians to return to Damascus.

His wife and three of his four children were also affected by the decision taken by Danish authorities.

Once the ruling was confirmed on appeal in late September — like 40 percent of some 200 other cases examined so far — Alkale and his family were ordered to leave.

READ ALSO: Danish refugee board overturns decisions to send home Syrians

They were told that if they didn’t go voluntarily, they would be placed in a detention centre.

The family has refused to leave.

Normally they would have been deported by now, but since Copenhagen has no diplomatic relations with Damascus, they can’t be. And so they wait.

Days and weeks go by without any news from the authorities.

In the meantime, the family has been stripped of their rights in Denmark.

Alkale can’t sleep, his eyes riveted on his phone as he keeps checking his messages.

“What will become of me now?” the 51-year-old asks.

“Everything is off. The kids aren’t going to school, and I don’t have work,” he says, the despair visible on his weary face as he sits in the living room of the home he refurbished himself in the small village of Lundby, an hour-and-a-half’s drive south of Copenhagen.

“All this so people will get annoyed enough to leave Denmark.”

For him, returning to Syria means certain death.

“I can’t go back, I’m wanted,” he tells AFP.

And yet, he has no way to earn a living here.

“As a foreigner staying illegally in Denmark, your rights are very limited,” notes his lawyer Niels-Erik Hansen, who has applied for new residency permits for the family.

In mid-2020, Denmark became the first European Union country to re-examine the cases of about 500 Syrians from Damascus, which is under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”.

The decision was later widened to include the neighbouring region of Rif Dimashq.

Despite a wave of Danish and international criticism, the Social Democratic government — which has pursued one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies — has refused to budge.

READ ALSO:

The Alkale family is considering leaving for another European country, even though they risk being sent back to Denmark.

Alkale’s oldest child was already over the age of 18 when they arrived in Denmark and therefore has her own residency permit, currently under review.

Of the three other children, only the youngest, 10-year-old Rawan, still has the carefree ways of a child.

Majed, 14, says he’s “bummed”, while Said, 17, who was studying to prepare for professional chef school, says he now has no idea what his future holds.

Only a handful of Syrians have so far been placed in detention centres, regularly criticised for poor sanitary conditions.

Asmaa al-Natour and her husband Omar are among the few.

They live in the Sjælsmark camp, a former army barracks surrounded by barbed wire and run by the prisons system since late October.

“This centre should disappear, it’s not good for humans, or even for animals. There are even rats,” says al-Natour.

READ ALSO:

The couple, who have two sons aged 21 and 25, arrived in Denmark in 2014.

“My husband and I opened a shop selling Arabic products, it was going well. Then I decided to resume my studies, but now everything has just stopped,” says al-Natour, who “just wants to get (her) life back.”

“Going back to Syria means going to prison, or even death, since we’re opposed to Bashar al-Assad. He’s a criminal.”

Niels-Erik Hansen, who also represents this couple, says his clients are being “held hostage by the Danish authorities.”

The government is trying “to spread the message that ‘in Denmark, we almost deport to Syria’,” he says.

Amnesty International recently criticised Syrian security forces’ use of violence against dozens of refugees who returned home.

Danish authorities meanwhile insist it’s safe for Syrians to go back.

“If you aren’t personally persecuted … there haven’t been acts of war in Damascus for several years now. And that is why it is possible for some to go back,” the government’s spokesman for migration, Rasmus Stoklund, tells AFP.

Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to official statistics.

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