The European Union has pledged €2.5 billion worth of aid to Syria despite the massacre of thousands of Christians and other minorities by militants linked to the country’s new government.
The Ninth Brussels Conference on Syria concluded on Monday, March 17th with a total pledge of €5.8 billion to the Middle Eastern country, which has been ravaged by a civil war since 2011.
The vow from the EU came on top of significant contributions from individual countries, including €300 million from Germany and €190 million from the United Kingdom.
The annual conference has been hosted by the EU since 2017 but took place without the government of Bashar al-Assad who was toppled last year by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist group previously allied with Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
This time, EU leaders welcomed the new government’s foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani.
While Assad’s regime was deemed a dictatorship by EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, she failed to mention the atrocities committed by the current leadership, and simply said “it’s high time that all Syrians can live safely in peace.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she hopes that Syria will become a country “with equal rights and representation for all—men and women alike, beyond faith, ethnicity and ideology. A country with no place for sectarian violence.”
The EU has already begun to ease energy, transport and financial sector sanctions against Syria.
This is either wishful thinking or pure cynicism by Brussels which has failed to acknowledge that HTS fighters have been involved in the massacre of 7,000 Christians and Alawites in Syria. Social media posts show Alawite or Christian men, women, and children barbarically shot at close range.
The head of the new Syrian government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, fought in the ranks of ISIS (Islamic State) and was the head of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, also known as Al-Nusra Front. The foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, was responsible for overseeing the transition of the Al-Nusra Front into HTS.
The HTS is designated as a terrorist group by the EU and the United Nations.
Only a few days ago, the leftist-centrist majority in the European Parliament also failed to condemn the massacres committed by the Syrian government’s associated militias when it approved a resolution which endorses the new government.
