Their labor in demand, Germany’s Syrians are in no rush to leave

Members of the Syrian community hold flags of Syria and Germany as they rally on Dec. 8, 2024 in Berlin, Germany, to celebrate the end of Bashar Assad’s rule. (AFP)
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Updated 13 December 2024
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Their labor in demand, Germany’s Syrians are in no rush to leave

  • Former chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome over one million asylum seekers predominantly from Syria was immediately controversial
  • Migration now ranks as Germans’ second most pressing concern ahead of federal elections in February 2025, behind the economy

BERLIN: It took only a few hours after the fall of Bashar Assad for some German politicians to begin suggesting it was time for Germany’s million Syrians – many of them refugees from the 2015 war – to consider returning home.
But many of those same Syrians have built lives in Germany and have no intention of returning. Employers, trade unions and business associations are now speaking up to stress how much they are needed in a German economy facing deep labor shortages.
“Telling people who are employed that they should go back to Syria is absolutely incomprehensible to me,” said Ulrich Temps, managing director of a painting and varnishing company.
“We have taken on the task of training and turning them into skilled workers,” Temps told Reuters of the 12 Syrians he has hired within his nationwide workforce of 530.
One of those is Mohammed Redatotonji, who came to Germany in November of 2015 as a Syrian refugee. He now lives in the northern city of Hanover with his wife, who joined him later via a family reunification program, and their three children.
“I am integrated here in Germany and I have completed my training here,” said Redatotonji, who was just out of high school when he left Syria. “I see my future here.”
Former chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome over one million asylum seekers predominantly from Syria was immediately controversial in Germany and has been blamed by some for contributing to the rise of the far-right AfD party.
Since then, Germany has also accepted more than 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine, while its economy is expected to contract in 2024 for the second consecutive year, being the worst performer among G7 countries.
Migration now ranks as Germans’ second most pressing concern ahead of federal elections in February 2025, behind the economy.
With an eye to stunting the appeal of the far-right, some mainstream German politicians have even proposed paying for Syrians’ flights back home. In the meantime, asylum applications from Syrians are on hold.
Germany’s likely next chancellor, conservative Friedrich Merz, has said the fall of Assad could be an opportunity for Syrians to return, but it is too early to make any decision.
While around 500,000 remain unemployed — among them mothers with children — Syrians have helped ease labor pressures which, according to the DIHK Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have left half of companies struggling to fill vacancies.
Around 43,000 Syrians are employed in a manufacturing sector which, until a recent slowdown, was long a key driver of growth. One is Salah Sadek, a firmware developer at automotive and industrial supplier Continental.
Sadek, whose wife did a doctorate in Germany, said his children would have to switch language and education system if they returned.
He did not rule out ever returning to his home city Damascus but added: “We need five years at least to wait to get more clarity on the situation in Syria.”
Data from the Institute for Employment Research think tank shows that the longer someone has been in Germany, the more likely they are to have a job, with an employment rate of over 60 percent for those present for over six years.
They are also less likely to want to leave, and the role they play in the local economy and community is more visible.
“We must not gamble away these integration successes,” said Susi Moebbeck, integration commissioner in the northeastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. “Businesses, clinics, and care facilities depend on Syrian workers.”
Around 10,000 Syrians work in German hospitals, making them the largest group of foreign doctors in Germany, according to Syrian Society for Doctors and Pharmacists in Germany.
“If large numbers were to leave the country, care provision would not collapse, but there would be noticeable gaps,” said Gerald Gass, chairman of German Hospital Federation (DKG).
On a Facebook group for Syrian doctors in Germany, a snap poll on the day of Assad’s fall showed 74 percent of 1,200 respondents said they were considering a permanent return. A poll three days later showed 65 percent of 1,159 said a return would depend on conditions in the country.
When Sandy Issa, a 36-year-old gynaecologist at a Berlin clinic, heard of Assad’s fall, she wished she could celebrate in Homs, her home city.
“We want to be in our country, but thinking about permanently returning... I believe is too early,” she said.


Swedish woman jailed for keeping Yazidi slaves in Syria

Updated 5 sec ago
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Swedish woman jailed for keeping Yazidi slaves in Syria

STOCKHOLM: A Swedish court on Tuesday sentenced a 52-year-old woman to 12 years in prison on genocide charges, in the country’s first court case over crimes by Daesh against the Yazidi minority.
Accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria in 2015, Lina Ishaq was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.
The crimes warranted a sentence of 16 years, but taking a previous sentence into account it ordered her to spend 12 years behind bars, the court said. Prosecutors had demanded a life jail sentence.
The woman, a Swedish citizen, had already been sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a Daesh child soldier.
Prosecutor Reena Devgun said she was happy with the convictions but she would likely appeal against the sentence.
“These are very, very severe crimes, and compared to other Swedish jurisprudence or Swedish sentencing traditions, I do think that there is room for a more severe sentence,” she told AFP.
The court said the case concerned nine Yazidi, six of whom were children at the time.
All the plaintiffs were captured by Daesh in attacks on Kurdish-speaking Yazidi villages that began in August 2014 in Sinjar, Iraq. Their male relatives were executed and thousands of women were taken.
After about five months of captivity, they arrived at Ishaq’s home in Raqqa.
“The woman kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves for a period of, in most cases, five months,” the court said.
Their movement was restricted, they were made to perform chores and some were photographed in preparation to be transferred to other people as slaves.
“Given the fact that she participated in the onward transfer of the injured parties, she is also responsible for enabling their continued imprisonment and enslavement,” the court said.
Ishaq also forced the Yazidis, who practice their own religion, to “become practicing Muslims” by making them recite Qur'an verses and pray four or five times a day.
She also called the injured parties “demeaning invectives such as ‘infidels’ or ‘slaves’,” the court said.
The court stressed “that the comprehensive system of enslavement” was one of “the crucial elements” implemented by Daesh in “the perpetration of the genocide, the crimes against humanity and gross war crimes that the Yazidi population was subjected to.”
As such, the court said “the woman shared the IS intent to destroy a religious group.”
Ishaq’s lawyer Mikael Westerlund said the woman had not decided whether to appeal, but said they were pleased the court had not handed down a life sentence as requested by the prosecution.
“It was important for the prosecution to sentence her for life,” he told AFP.
Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined Daesh in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo.
Ishaq grew up in a Christian Iraqi family in Sweden but converted to Islam after meeting her late husband and extremist Jiro Mehho, with whom she had six children, in the 1990s.
She traveled to Syria with her children in 2013. Mehho died in August 2013, and Ishaq moved to Raqqa in 2014 and re-married.

Global policymakers, innovators gather in New Delhi for India Energy Week

Updated 11 February 2025
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Global policymakers, innovators gather in New Delhi for India Energy Week

  • Thousands of top industry leaders participate in Indian government’s flagship energy event
  • India’s main focus in the energy sector is local production and supply chains, PM Modi says

NEW DELHI: Thousands of top industry executives, innovators and policymakers gathered in New Delhi on Tuesday for India Energy Week 2025, where they will be discussing energy access and sustainability.

More than 70,000 delegates, officials and visitors are expected to take part in the Indian government’s flagship annual energy event, which over the next four days will feature 500 speakers, 700 exhibitors and 10 national pavilions from countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia displaying their newest technology.

Held at the Yashobhoomi convention center in New Delhi, India Energy Week 2025 aims to spotlight energy access, security and new global energy systems, in line with the South Asian giant’s vision of energy transition.

“India’s energy ambitions stand on five pillars: We have resources, which we are harnessing. Secondly, we are encouraging our brilliant minds to innovate. Thirdly, we have economic strength, political stability. Fourthly, India has strategic geography, which makes energy trade more attractive and easier. And fifthly, India is committed to global sustainability. This is creating new possibilities in India’s energy sector,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a virtual address to the event’s participants.

“The next two decades are very important for India’s development. And in the next five years, we are going to cross many big milestones. Many of our energy goals are aligned with the 2030 deadline. We want to add 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Indian Railways has set a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Our goal is to produce 5 million metric tons of green hydrogen every year by 2030 ... What India has achieved in the last 10 years has given us the confidence that we will definitely achieve these targets.”

India aims to generate 500 GW of electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, under its nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement. Solar energy is the dominant contributor to its renewable energy growth, accounting for 47 percent of the total installed renewable energy capacity.

The solar power sector has observed a 3,450 percent increase in capacity over the past decade, rising from 2.82 GW in 2014 to 100 GW in January 2025, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The growth is fueled by local solar module production, which in 2014 had a capacity of only 2 GW.

“There is a lot of potential in India for manufacturing various types of hardware including PV modules. We are supporting local manufacturing,” Modi said. “India’s major focus is on Make in India and local supply chains.”

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who opened the India Energy Week, urged participants to help chart a roadmap to stabilize energy markets and strengthen international cooperation.

“I am pleased that the event will see participation from more than 20 energy and other ministers, including deputies, from important stakeholders such as Qatar, UK, Russia, Brazil, Tanzania and Venezuela,” he said.

“⁠It is our fervent hope that the India Energy Week becomes the definitive platform for shaping the energy agenda of the future. This is where transformative partnerships shall take shape, where game-changing technologies are unveiled, and the future of energy is written.”


Bangladesh aims to hold December polls in first vote since Hasina ouster

Updated 11 February 2025
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Bangladesh aims to hold December polls in first vote since Hasina ouster

  • Chief of Bangladesh’s interim administration earlier said reforms must take place before election
  • Special commission report accused Hasina of rigging previous polls in Bangladesh

DHAKA: Bangladesh is preparing to hold elections in December, the first general vote since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the former longtime prime minister, Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Mohammad Sanaullah said on Tuesday.

The country’s interim government, headed by Nobel prize laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, has been implementing a series of reforms and preparing for elections since taking charge in August, after Hasina fled Dhaka amid student-led protests that called for her resignation.

In November, the transitional authorities appointed a new five-member election commission, which held a meeting with foreign envoys on Tuesday to present its plans for the upcoming polls.

“We have told them that we must make preparations based on the earliest possible date for the election. Our position remains unchanged. We are preparing with December in mind,” Sanaullah told journalists after the meeting.

“The national election is currently the Election Commission’s priority.”

Yunus previously said that Bangladesh could hold elections by the end of 2025 or in the first half of 2026, provided that electoral reforms take place first.

This includes having the Election Commission prepare a new voter list, a process expected to take months.

Following 15 years of uninterrupted rule, Hasina and her Awami League party had allegedly politicized key government institutions, including the Election Commission.

In a report submitted to the interim government last week, a special commission on electoral reforms said that Hasina was responsible for rigging the last three national polls in Bangladesh, as it proposed more than 200 recommendations to improve the country’s voting system.

“In 2014, 2018 and 2024, we witnessed three general elections where the big takeaway was that these were not participatory. There were big questions regarding the quality of these elections due to the absence of the opposition,” Dr. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, chairman of the National Election Monitoring Council, told Arab News.

“I think the election should be organized within the shortest possible time considering the ongoing law and order, and political scenario of the country … if there is goodwill and good intentions from the authorities, nothing is impossible.”


Five killed in suicide bomb blast in northeastern Afghanistan, police say

Updated 11 February 2025
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Five killed in suicide bomb blast in northeastern Afghanistan, police say

  • Blast at Kabul Bank kills bank’s security guard, four others including civilians and members of ruling Taliban movement
  • Militants from the Afghan chapters of Daesh have waged insurgency against the Taliban since they returned to power in 2021

KABUL: At least five people were killed when a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his body detonated outside a bank in northeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, police said.
The blast took place at 8:35 a.m. (0405 GMT) near the Kabul Bank branch in Kunduz province, killing the bank’s security guard and four others including civilians and members of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement, police said.
Seven people were wounded, provincial police spokesman Jumma Uddin Khakasr added.
He did not say who was believed to be behind the attack and no group has claimed responsibility so far.
Militants from the Afghan chapters of Daesh have waged an insurgency against the Taliban since they returned to power in 2021.
Taliban authorities say they have mostly crushed the group, even as it continues to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.


Suicide bomber kills five outside bank in Afghanistan: police

Updated 11 February 2025
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Suicide bomber kills five outside bank in Afghanistan: police

  • Attack targeted a queue of people waiting to collect their salaries

KABUL: A suicide bomber killed five people including Taliban security forces on Tuesday in an explosion outside a bank in northern Afghanistan, police said.
Seven people were also wounded in the attack which targeted a queue of people waiting to collect their salaries from a bank in the city of Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province.
“A suicide bomber, who had improvised explosive devices, detonated himself,” said Jumadin Khaksar, police spokesman for Kunduz province.
He said civilians, civil servants and members of the Taliban security forces were among those killed.
“The Kunduz Province Police Command is working with relevant organizations to find the perpetrators of the incident and bring them to justice.”