Republican US congressmen visit Syria, meet with new leadership, local Christians

Two US Congress members landed in Damascus on Friday to meet Syrian officials, the first visit by American lawmakers to the war-ravaged country since Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power by an Islamist-led rebel offensive in December.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also visited Syria on Friday, his first trip to the country since the fall of the Assad regime, and met with new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Istanbul-based SyriaTV reported Friday, citing sources, that Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani will soon visit Washington.

US Representatives Cory Mills of Florida, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, are both members of US President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

Mills met new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Friday night, said a person in the delegation. They discussed US sanctions and Iran during a 90-minute meeting.

The source said Stutzman was set to meet on Saturday with Sharaa, who is still under US and UN sanctions for his previous ties to al-Qaeda.

Asked about meeting a leader still sanctioned by Washington, Stutzman cited examples of Trump’s administration engaging with Iranian and North Korean leaders.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to anybody,” he said, and said he was eager to see how Syria would deal with foreign fighters and rule the country’s diverse population inclusively.

Syria’s new Islamist-led leadership has pushed for the US and Europe to fully lift sanctions so the country can kickstart an economy decimated by more than a decade of war.

Mills and Stutzman toured parts of the Syrian capital destroyed by the war, met with Christian religious leaders and plan to meet other Syrian government ministers.

“There’s an opportunity here – these opportunities come around once in a lifetime,” Stutzman told Reuters. “I don’t want Syria pushed into the arms of China, or back into the arms of Russia and Iran.”

Last month the US gave Syria a list of conditions to fulfill in exchange for partial sanctions relief – including removing foreign fighters from leadership roles – but the Trump administration has otherwise engaged little with the new rulers.

The congressmen’s visit was organized by the Syrian American Alliance for Peace and Prosperity.

Stutzman said Syrians in Damascus spoke to him about Israel’s strikes on the country, which have targeted military sites in the south as well as around the capital. Israel has also sent ground troops into parts of southern Syria, and has repeatedly expressed its distrust in al-Sharaa.

“My hope is that a strong government is established in Syria that is supportive of the people of Syria, and the people of Syria support the government – and that the relationship between Israel and Syria can be a strong relationship. I think that’s possible, honestly I do,” Stuzman said.

Mahmoud Abbas visits post-Assad Syria for first time

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also met al-Sharaa in Damascus on Friday, on Abbas’s first visit to Syria in 16 years.

According to a Syrian government source, the pair were expected to discuss reinforcing ties between Syria and the Palestinians, as well as the “threats” faced by both parties.

According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, 560,000 Palestinians lived in Syria before the outbreak of civil war in 2011. Around 438,000 remain, 40 percent of whom were displaced during the war.

Abbas last visited in 2009, meeting with Assad.

Abbas and Sharaa met for the first time on the sidelines of an Arab summit in March aimed at hammering out a plan for rebuilding the devastated Gaza Strip, where Palestinian terror group Hamas has been at war with Israel since attacking the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.

NYT story revisits Assad’s 2013 gas attack

A report in The New York Times on Friday recalled the Assad regime’s deadly sarin gas attack in 2013, which killed at least 1,500 people, marking the single deadliest episode of the 13-year civil war.

Assad, who fled to Russia amid the rebels’ lightning offensive late last year, and 22 of his associates face charges of war crimes for the attack, but are unlikely to face justice under Moscow’s protection.

Since the regime’s fall, survivors of the attack have returned home after years of enforced exile, the newspaper reported, quoting former rescue workers’ first-hand accounts of the incident, from which many still are still suffering long-term effects.

“People were falling dead on the streets,” recalled former rescuer Akram al-Baladi. “We were frightened we would drive over bodies.”

Seif Alddin al-Dahla, who was fighting for rebel forces at the time of the attack, told the Times his entire family were killed in the gas attack.

“The regime could not defeat us,” al-Dahla said. “So they showed their strength against women and children. They used rockets and airstrikes against our families to defeat us.”

You’re a dedicated reader

Join Our Community

Join Our Community

Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this