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Norway ship docks in Cyprus for Syria role

The Norwegian frigate tasked with escorting Syria's deadly chemical weapons arsenal is now anchored at the Cypriot port of Limassol, awaiting orders to sail to Syria.

Norway ship docks in Cyprus for Syria role
Norwegian frigate KNM Helge Ingstad - Bjørnar Henningsen
The boat, together with a Danish frigate, is to escort two cargo ships, one Danish and one Norwegian, to the Syrian port of Latakia, where they will take on chemical agents, as set out in an Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons road map.
   
A deal for Syria to surrender its chemical arsenal narrowly averted US airstrikes on the country, after Washington said 1,400 people were gassed in the Ghouta area near Damascus in August.
   
Under the plan, the ships must leave Syria before December 31. 
 
Washington has agreed to help destroy the chemicals once they are on board a US ship in international waters, but the task force in Limassol is still unsure how the chemicals will be transferred.
   
Commander Torben Mikkelsen, the Danish naval officer leading the task force, is busy preparing for the delicate operation.
   
"My job right now is to prepare this task group, capable of transporting chemical agents out of the port of Latakia in Syria, to a so-far not identified destination for ongoing further destruction," he said.
   
The skipper of the Norwegian warship, Commander Per Rostad, acknowledged that the task would be a difficult one.
   
"The transport of chemical agents on this scale, it's historic," he said, while adding that the task force was "well trained and well prepared."
   
The two cargo ships, only one of which has reached Cyprus, will carry a combined total of 500 tonnes of chemical agents, said Bjorn Schmidt, a Danish civilian chemical expert taking part in the mission.
   
Damascus has declared 1,290 tonnes of chemical weapons, precursors and ingredients.
   
Before the chemical agents are loaded on to the ships, the Syrian army and the OPCW will place them in sealed shipping containers, which will then be fitted with GPS devices, Schmidt said.
 
"The worst-case scenario would be a spill on the ship," said Schmidt, but civilian and military experts will be on hand to deal with any possible accidents and evacuate anyone contaminated with the chemicals.
 
The container ships are due to pick up Syria's most dangerous chemical agents, labelled "Priority 1" and "Priority 2."
   
Individually, the agents are not neurotoxic, but once mixed with precursors, lethal gasses such as sarin or VX can be created.
   
But Schmidt was confident that "people putting the containers on the ships will make sure these chemicals are not put right next to each other," reducing the chances of any mishap.
   
He will also check the containers' contents against lists compiled by the United Nations and the OPCW using scanners that allow him to check inside crates without opening them.
   
Once checked, sealed and loaded onto the ships, the containers will only be opened again when they have been handed over to the team responsible for neutralising them.
   
The agents will be neutralised by hydrolysis, a process in which they are mixed with other chemicals and water at high temperatures, breaking down the chemical bonds between them and render them harmless.
   
The Pentagon is fitting the equipment to help neutralise the agents on the MV Cape Ray, a 200-metre (660-foot) cargo ship.
   
But the Danish and Norwegian navies are still uncertain how exactly they will hand over the containers.
   
Mikkelsen, who will be leading the escort ships, says he would prefer to dock in a harbour to transfer the containers, rather than attempt a potentially dangerous handover at sea.
   
But so far, no country has offered to let the ships dock for the transfer, and so long as uncertainty remains, the task force will stay in Limassol.
   
"We need to know the transload harbour. It's not up for me to decide, it's for the Danish government to decide," Mikkelsen said.
   
"They would be very reluctant to take it on board without a final destination," he warned.
   
Under UN Security Council Resolution 2118 passed in September, Syria's entire chemical arsenal is to be destroyed by June 30.

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SYRIA

‘I can’t go back’: Syrian refugees in Denmark face limbo after status revoked

Bilal Alkale's family is among the hundred or so Syrian refugees in Denmark whose lives are on hold amid an insufferable legal limbo -- their temporary residency permits have been revoked but they can't be deported. Now, they have no rights.

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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