DEARBORN: Nizam Abazid is gleefully planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family moved to the US, but she’s excited about the prospect of introducing her three kids to relatives they’ve never met in person.
They are among thousands of Detroit-area Syrian Americans who are celebrating the unexpected overthrow of the Syrian government, which crushed dissent and imprisoned political enemies with impunity during the more than 50-year reign of ousted President Bashar Assad and his father before him.
“As of Saturday night, the Assad regime is no longer in power,” Alhoussaini, 31, said through tears Tuesday at one of the Detroit-area school and day care facilities her family operates. “And it’s such a surreal moment to even say that out loud, because I never thought that I would see this day.”
It may be some time before either visits Syria. Though happy to see Assad go, many Western countries are waiting for the dust to settle before committing to a Syria strategy, including whether it’s safe for the millions who fled the country’s civil war to return.
Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the insurgency that toppled Assad after an astonishing advance that took less than two weeks, has disavowed his group’s former ties to Al-Qaeda and cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. But the US still labels him a terrorist and warns against any travel to Syria, where the US hasn’t had an embassy since 2012, the year after the war started.
But for Syrians in the US who have been unable to visit, the overthrow of the Assad government has given them hope that they can safely return, either for good or to visit.
“The end of the regime is the hope for all the Syrian people,” Abazid said this week, days after Assad and his family fled to Russia.
Abazid said he could go to Syria whenever, since he holds dual US and Syrian citizenship, but that he’ll wait a few months for things there to settle down.
Although European leaders have said it’s not safe enough yet to allow war-displaced refugees to return to Syria, Abazid said he and his brother aren’t concerned.
“When Assad’s forces were in power, my fate would’ve been in jail or beheaded,” Abazid said. “But now, I will not be worried about that anymore.”
Many Syrians who immigrated to the US settled in the Detroit area. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans of any state and is home to the country’s largest Arab-majority city, Dearborn. It also has more than 310,000 residents who are of Middle Eastern or North African descent.
As rebel forces seized control of Syria, capping a lightning-quick advance that few thought possible even a month ago, Syrians in and around Detroit — like their counterparts all over the world — followed along in disbelief as reports poured in about one city after another slipping from Assad’s grip. When news broke that Assad’s government had fallen, celebrations erupted.
Abazid, who owns a cellphone business in Dearborn, was born in Daraa, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. He moved to the US in 1984 at age 18, and although he’s gone back a few times, he hasn’t visited since 1998 because of what he described as “harassment” by Syrian intelligence. That trip had to be heavily coordinated with US authorities, as he said Syrian authorities took him into custody and detained him for more than six months during a 1990 visit.
“When I was kidnapped from the airport, my family didn’t even know ... what it was about,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I still don’t know the reason. I have no idea why I was kidnapped.”
Abazid, 59, said his parents have died since that 1998 trip, but his five sisters still live in Syria. Each of his four brothers left Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, including one who hasn’t been back since emigrating 53 years ago, shortly after Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, rose to power.
Alhoussaini, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said she was born in Damascus and moved to the Detroit area as a young girl, “mainly because there was nothing left for us in Syria.”
She said under the Assad family’s rule, her grandfather’s land was taken. Authorities detained him for almost a month. Her father was also detained before the family left.
“There never needed to be a reason,” Alhoussaini said. “My dad was able to return one time, in 2010. And he has not been able to go back to his home country since, mainly because we spoke up against the Assad regime when the revolution started in 2011. And we attended many protests here. We were vocal on social media about it, did many interviews.”
But with Bashar Assad gone and Syria in the hands of the rebels, “We don’t have to be afraid anymore to visit our country,” she said.
Her father, 61, is considering making a trip to Syria to see his siblings and visit his parents’ graves. Alhoussaini said she and her husband, who is from the northern city of Aleppo, want to take their kids over to visit with family and friends.
Alhoussaini’s three sisters, ages 40, 34 and 29, were also born in Syria. But none of them have been back.
Now, there is hope and amazement that people in Syria can celebrate in the streets, she said.
Alhoussaini said she thinks people who were born and raised in the US won’t be able to fully relate, because Americans enjoy a freedom of expression that people in Syria have never had.
“You can say what you want. You can go out into the street and protest whoever you want,” she said. “You will not be detained for it. You will not be killed for it.”
The Detroit area’s many Syrians are celebrating Assad’s overthrow and planning long-delayed visits
https://arab.news/5an2x
The Detroit area’s many Syrians are celebrating Assad’s overthrow and planning long-delayed visits
- Nizam Abazid says he’s excited to see the country of his birth for the first time since 1998 but that he can now return without fear.
Indonesia rescuers search for survivors as landslide kills at least 17
- Intense rainfall in a mountainous area near Pekalongan city in Central Java province sparked the landslide on Monday
Pekalongan: Hundreds of rescuers were searching through thick mud and debris to find survivors Wednesday after a rain-triggered landslide in Indonesia killed at least 17 people and left nine missing.
Intense rainfall in a mountainous area near Pekalongan city in Central Java province sparked the landslide on Monday, collapsing bridges and burying cars and houses.
Search and rescue agency Basarnas said in a statement Wednesday that the toll remained unchanged from Tuesday at 17 dead, nine missing and 13 people injured.
But another body was found, Mohammad Yulian Akbar, a local official told AFP later Wednesday, giving a higher toll of 18.
Heavy machinery was deployed to clear road access for search teams and around 200 rescue personnel have been sent to help, Akbar said.
“The focus is to search for the victims,” he said, adding that the local government had declared an emergency in the district for two weeks.
The worst hit area was Kasimpar village according to the local official, where the landslide struck a coffee shop and people who were trying to shelter from the rain.
Police, soldiers and volunteers have joined the search alongside rescue workers, which is taking place around 90 kilometers (60 miles) west of the city of Semarang.
But efforts were intermittently suspended Tuesday as heavy rain continued to pound the area.
The weather forecast for the next three days suggests moderate rain that could “cause floods, flash floods and landslides,” warned Abdul Muhari, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), on Tuesday.
Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season, typically between November and April.
In November, flooding triggered by intense rains in western Indonesia killed 27 people.
But some disasters caused by adverse weather have taken place outside that season in recent years. Climate change has also increased the intensity of storms, leading to heavier rains, flash floods and stronger gusts.
In May, at least 67 people died after heavy rains caused flash floods in West Sumatra, pushing a mixture of ash, sand, and pebbles from the eruption of Mount Marapi into residential areas.
Trump tests whether a bulldozer can also be a peacemaker
- During his first stint in power, Trump ordered a strike that killed senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and vowed confrontation with China
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has vowed to be a peacemaker in his new term, but his aggressive early actions threaten to alienate US friends in a way that could hinder his ambitions, experts say.
In an inaugural address on Monday, Trump said that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier” and pointed to his support for a new ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters as he returned to the White House after four years, Trump also suggested he would press Russia to make a deal to end its three-year invasion of Ukraine, quipping that President Vladimir Putin — with whom he had famously warm relations in the past — knows he is “destroying” his own country.
But in the throwback to the bedlam of his 2017-2021 term, Trump’s return was also consumed by rage over grievances at home, and the most memorable foreign-policy line of his inaugural address was a vow to take back the Panama Canal, which the United States returned in 1999 but where Trump charges that China has gained too strong a foothold.
Trump has also spoken of seizing Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, moved to send the military to the Mexican border to stop migration, vowed tariffs even against close allies and announced the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord, both home to almost every other country.
“Trump’s worldview seems to be contradictory. He has a streak that is pro-peace and another streak which seems more confrontational and militarist,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, which advocates restraint.
During his first stint in power, Trump ordered a strike that killed senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and vowed confrontation with China, although he also boasted of keeping US troops out of new wars and sought diplomacy with North Korea.
“In the first term, the more confrontational and militarist streak won out more often than not” on tension spots such as Iran, Friedman said.
This time, he said, at least on Ukraine and the Middle East, Trump appears to have shifted to a more progressive stance.
But on Latin America, and in his selection of aides with hawkish views on China, Trump remains hawkish, Friedman said.
He said that Trump essentially had a 19th-century philosophy in line with populist president Andrew Jackson, feeling a comfort with threatening the use of force to achieve national interests.
Such a way of thinking, for Trump, “isn’t consistent necessarily with being a peacemaker or a warmonger” but rather is a mix.
Trump made no clear mention of US allies on his inaugural day. In the past he has described NATO allies as freeloaders and pushed them to pay more for their own security.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was meeting Tuesday with counterparts from Japan, India and Australia — the so-called Quad of democracies which China sees as an effort to contain its rise.
Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Trump should be mindful of lessons from China, whose assertive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy brought together a number of Asian countries on the receiving end.
“It would be a profound shift if the United States went from being seen as the principal provider of security to being the principal source on uncertainty,” Alterman said.
Trump, as he seeks to negotiate deals, “has an interest in keeping friendly countries on his side,” Alterman said.
Kori Schake, who served in senior defense planning roles under former president George W. Bush, said it was too early to tell the impact of Trump’s “chaos” on peacemaking and said that early actions could have been even more severe.
“But the actions he did take are still damaging. Withdrawing from the World Health Organization will give us less warning of emergent disease,” she said.
“Antagonizing Panama is counterproductive and will fan anti-Americanism throughout the hemisphere,” she said.
Trump’s UN pick blasts ‘anti-Semitic rot’ in world body
- Stefanik was pushed on her views on the war in Gaza, and noted that she voted to defund UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s nominee to represent Washington at the United Nations railed against “anti-Semitic rot” in the global organization as she was grilled by senators at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
New York congresswoman Elize Stefanik noted that America contributes more to the UN than any other country and called for reform to ensure its tax dollars were not “propping up entities that are counter to American interests, anti-Semitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption or terrorism.”
A right-wing firebrand who was considered a moderate before the Trump era, Stefanik is seen as one of the most vocal supporters in Congress of both Israel and US Jewish causes.
“It’s one of the reasons why, in my conversation with President Trump, I was interested in this position — because if you look at the anti-Semitic rot within the United Nations, there are more resolutions targeting Israel than any other country, any other crisis, combined,” Stefanik told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Stefanik, 40, made the same criticism of the US higher education system as she touted her record of holding the feet of college administrators to the fire during aggressive questioning last year over anti-Semitism on campuses.
“My oversight work led to the most viewed testimony in the history of Congress,” she said.
“This hearing with university presidents was heard around the world and viewed billions of times, because it exposed the anti-Semitic rot in colleges and universities and was a watershed moment in American higher education.”
Stefanik was pushed on her views on the war in Gaza, and noted that she voted to defund UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Former president Joe Biden halted its US funding over allegations that members were possibly involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Stefanik also revealed that she agreed with far-right Israeli ministers who believe Israel has a “biblical right to the entire West Bank” — but avoided being pinned down on whether she supported Palestinian self-determination.
Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman is the only Democrat to have pledged his support for Stefanik, but others have indicated they may wave her through and she is expected to be confirmed with little drama in a vote of the full Senate.
“If confirmed, I will work to ensure that our mission to the United Nations serves the interest of the American people, and represents American President Trump’s America First, peace-through-strength foreign policy,” she said.
Australia probes possible foreign funding behind anti-Semitic attacks
- Vandals have in recent weeks torched a Sydney childcare center, set cars ablaze in largely Jewish neighborhoods and splashed inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti
SYDNEY: Australia is investigating whether local criminals were paid by foreign actors to carry out a spate of anti-Semitic attacks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday.
Vandals have in recent weeks torched a Sydney childcare center, set cars ablaze in largely Jewish neighborhoods and splashed inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti.
Masked arsonists firebombed a synagogue in the city of Melbourne in December.
Albanese said some of these attacks appeared to have been carried out by “paid actors.”
“Some of these are being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an idealogy, but are paid actors,” he said.
“It’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from.”
Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw said detectives were investigating whether cash to fund these attacks had flowed from “overseas.”
“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs.”
Neither Albanese nor police offered any details about what evidence authorities may have collected, which foreign actors were under suspicion, or why they were supposedly involved.
Police on Wednesday charged a 33-year-old man with attempting to light a Sydney synagogue on fire.
Eight people were charged on Tuesday with a string of “hate crime-related incidents” dating back to November, police said.
Trump’s pardons will embolden Proud Boys, other far-right groups, say experts
- Gavin McInnes, the British-born founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends were celebrating late on Monday by “pounding bourbons and laughing our heads off”
- “Our politics has always been violent,” Pattis said, pointing to events ranging from the US Civil War to the protests in the 1960s
WASHINGTON: A day after US President Donald Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, America’s far-right celebrated. Some called for the death of judges who oversaw the trials. Others partied and expressed relief. Some even wept with joy.
Several experts who study extremism said the extraordinary reversal for rioters who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy, will embolden the Proud Boys and other extremist groups such as white supremacists who have openly called for political violence.
In a few pen strokes, Trump reversed the largest US Justice Department investigation and prosecution in history, as he attempted to rewrite what happened during the violent riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As he took office for a second term on Monday, Trump continued to claim, falsely, that the 2020 election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner. He has described the riots as a peaceful “day of love” rather than a melee aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
“We’re not going to put up with that crap anymore,” Trump said at a post-inauguration rally on Monday, describing the Jan. 6 offenders as “hostages.”
For the convicted Jan. 6 defendants, and for the Trump faithful, the pardons were vindication for unjust persecutions by the president’s political enemies.
Gavin McInnes, the British-born founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends were celebrating late on Monday by “pounding bourbons and laughing our heads off.”
Before the 2020 election, Trump told the Proud Boys – a violent all-male extremist group – to “stand back and stand by.” Three months later, federal prosecutors say, the group’s leaders plotted the Jan. 6 attack.
“This is a victory for us,” said McInnes, now a right-wing podcaster. If Trump hadn’t given all the Proud Boys clemency, the president would have been “dead to me, and Proud Boys and MAGA and everyone,” he said. “But luckily that didn’t happen.”
In a video posted online shortly after the pardons, convicted rioter Christopher Kuehne, a Marine veteran from Kansas who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys in January 2021, sobbed: “I am finally free. I don’t even have the words to thank President Trump for what he has done for us.” He was sentenced in February to 75 days in prison and 24 months of supervised release for obstructing law enforcement.
Another Proud Boy told Reuters the pardons would help recruit more members. “A lot of people stayed away from us after there were arrests,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now they are going to feel like they are bulletproof.”
The riot began after Trump rallied thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Inspired by Trump’s baseless rigged-election claims, they swarmed the Capitol, setting off pitched battles with police. Some bludgeoned officers with makeshift weapons that included metal pipes, wooden poles and baseball bats. Prosecutors said the rioters carried firearms, tasers, swords, hatchets and knives.
Four people died on the day of the attack, including a woman protester shot by police. One Capitol Police officer who fought the rioters died the next day. Another 140 officers were injured. Four officers who responded to the riot later committed suicide.
Norm Pattis, a defense attorney who represents three Proud Boys and the leader of the Oath Keepers, a militia, dismissed the notion that the sweeping clemency would somehow lead to an increase in political violence.
“Our politics has always been violent,” Pattis said, pointing to events ranging from the US Civil War to the protests in the 1960s. “And so a few-hours riot at the Capitol is going to warrant years, decades behind bars? For some people, it’s disproportionate, and in my view just repulsive.”
“YOU NEED ACCOUNTABILITY”
Two police officers who were beaten while trying to hold off the crowd said the pardons were a chilling sign that loyalty to Trump is now more important than the rule of law.
“It’s outrageous,” former DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone told Reuters. Fanone suffered a heart attack and a brain injury after he was beaten, sprayed with chemical irritants and shocked with a stun gun during the Jan. 6 violence. Fanone, 44, who spent 20 years as a police officer, said the pardons likely will inspire other supporters to violence, “because they believe Donald Trump will grant them a pardon. And why wouldn’t they believe that?”
Aquilino Gonell, a former US Capitol Police sergeant who was injured defending the Capitol, said Trump’s pardons had nothing to do with righting an injustice. Trump and his Republican allies “have lost their claim to having moral high ground when defending our system of governance, the constitution, and supporting the police,” he said.
Among the pardoned were more than 300 who pleaded guilty to either assaulting or obstructing law enforcement, including 69 who admitted to assaulting police with a dangerous or deadly weapon. Trump’s order commuted the sentences of 14 convicted of serious crimes, including Stewart Rhodes, former leader of the Oath Keepers. Trump also issued pardons for others, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy.
Nearly 300 rioters had links to 46 far-right groups or movements, according to a study from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a University of Maryland-based network of scholars that tracks and analyzes terrorist incidents.
Heather Shaner, a Washington lawyer who served as a court-appointed defense attorney for more than 40 of the defendants, called the pardons an attempt to whitewash history. “You need accountability,” she said in an interview. “Only by acknowledging the truth and providing accountability can you move forward.”
Some political extremism experts said the pardons would incentivize pro-Trump vigilantes to commit violence under the belief they’ll receive legal immunity if they act in the interests of Trump. “They are going to feel they can do whatever they want,” Julie Farnam, who was the assistant director of intelligence for the US Capitol Police during the Jan. 6 riots, said of far-right groups. “
They’ll feel like they can because there is no leadership in the United States that tries to stop it,” said Farnam, who now runs a private investigative agency.
Couy Griffin, who was stripped of his seat as a New Mexico county commissioner after he was convicted of trespassing on Capitol grounds, said he instructed his attorney to decline Trump’s pardon, as he appeals his conviction in federal court. In an interview, Griffin said he believes Trump’s enemies distorted the truth about the Capitol riots.
“Was there some violence against police officers? Yes, there was also a lot of violence of police officers against the crowd,” he said, echoing a frequent complaint of Trump supporters.
DEATH THREATS TO JURISTS, POLITICIANS
Many Trump supporters praised the pardons in right-wing online forums. Some threatened those who supported the prosecutions.
On the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win, at least two dozen people expressed hopes for executions of Democrats, judges or law enforcement linked to the Jan. 6 cases. They called for jurists or police to be hanged, pummeled to death, ground up in wood chippers or thrown from helicopters.
“Gather the entire federal judiciary into a stadium. Then have them listen and watch while the judges are beaten to death,” one wrote. “Cut their heads off and put them on pikes outside” the Justice Department.
Others called for killing Trump’s political critics after former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential Democrat, called the pardons “an outrageous insult.” “If someone successfully whacked Pelosi, I would consider them a hero,” one Patriots.Win commenter wrote. Another wished for Liz Cheney, the Republican who defied Trump by spearheading the congressional investigation of the violence, to “hang.”
One of the most famous rioters, Jake Angeli-Chansley, who became known as the “QAnon Shaman” for wearing a horned hat in the Capitol, took to the social media platform X to celebrate after the pardons. Sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021, he was released from federal custody in 2023.
“NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHAFU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”
