Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated jihadist fighters carried out a large-scale operation against Kurdish fighters in the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo. Dozens of civilins were killed and around 150,000 others were displaced.
"This issue has been discussed at different times. As we said last Monday, we are very concerned because of this situation. Of course, we assess the government in Damascus based on the extent to which it respects human rights and the rights of all components of society. For Germany, it is clear that peace and stability in Syria are in our interest," German Foreign Office spokesman Martin Giese told Rudaw during a press briefing.
"The Syrian government has promised to conduct a political transition process with the participation of all groups in society and to ensure the security of all Syrians. We see that, despite all the difficulties, the political and human rights situation across Syria has improved somewhat," he added.
European Parliament members and German lawmakers have censured Berlin over their "silence" regarding the Syrian army's ongoing attacks on Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria.
“The silence regarding this unelected leader, Jolani, or Sharaa as he calls himself, is shameful. We are now repeating the same mistakes we previously made with Assad,” Katrin Langensiepen from Germany’s Green Party told Rudaw earlier this week.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the nom de guerre of Sharaa, who led the extremist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia that overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024. Assad’s rule was marked by widespread and systematic human rights violations and war crimes. The US and EU lifted their terrorist designation on HTS after it came to power.
Germany hosts 1 million Syrian refugees. Many are minorities who fled violence and repression by extremist groups and Assad’s regime. Berlin has stepped up efforts to deport refugees, including Syrians.
"We are currently working on the deportation of criminals. So far, two individual deportations have been carried out, and another deportation is being planned. However, this applies only to those who have committed serious crimes. These are individual cases, but we are trying to carry out deportations of criminals on a continuous basis," Sarah Fruhauf, press spokesperson for the German Federal interior ministry, told Rudaw during the same press briefing Giese spoke.
Following the massacre of minority Alawites and Druze by state forces and their allied militias last year, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the de facto army of the Kurdish region in northeast Syria (Rojava), recognized the need for weaponry to protect Kurdish communities. During the Aleppo clashes, footage of jihadists committing war crimes were widely overlooked by western media, including a video of a bearded man throwing a Kurdish female fighter off a building after executing her.
Alla Shally contributed to this article from Berlin.