Bashar Al-Assad Regime: No More Passports to Syrians

A new punishment imposed by the Bashar al-Assad regime on the Syrian people, by announcing the Ministry of Interior and its consulates abroad that passport books are not available for those who want to obtain them, in an unexpected and unprecedented crisis that has caused a paralysis in the movement of migrants.

The Minister of Interior of the Syrian regime, Major General Muhammad al-Rahmoun, said in a press statement in early August 2021 that the crisis is due to “purely technical” reasons.

Without progress, the period set by the minister on August 20, 2021, to solve the problem of delays in issuing passports to Syrians, expired.

This crisis has existed since the Immigration and Passports Department in June 2021 and its branches in the Syrian governorates witnessed crowding due to the delay in issuing passports according to the usual timeframes.

Syrians live abroad in a state of confusion due to the fact that the consulates of the Syrian regime have stopped giving passports; This means that many transactions and residences are hampered in the countries in which they reside.

In 2021, the Syrian passport ranked 105th among the countries of the world, according to the "Henley" index, the approved ranking of all passports in the world, which revealed that only 29 countries allow entry to its holder without a prior visa.

This passport is described by the Syrians as the most expensive in the world in terms of the price paid to extract it, especially for those abroad, the weakest in terms of importance, and the shortest in terms of validity period.

 

Negotiating With Lithuania

It became clear that this crisis, which extended and affected the Syrian regime's consulates abroad, had its political causes related to the way the West dealt with the regime under sanctions.

This was confirmed by the Syrian politician and journalist Ayman Abdel Nour, who said: "Syrians of all categories obtain passports, which led to the creation of a new passport crisis after the number of printed books in France ran out."

He added in an audio message to the Syrians that the regime "is suffering from obtaining the approval of any foreign country to print new passports."

Abdel Nour revealed that the regime assigned a Syrian businessman to negotiate with Lithuania to print its passports, stressing that it cannot be printed anywhere, and there are limited countries approved to print them in the world.

He pointed out that Lithuania needs the approval of the European Union countries as a member of it, and in order not to violate the European sanctions imposed on the system, expecting the European Union to give Lithuania its approval.

He pointed out that European countries do not know about 15 percent of the real names of refugees, and that they need to know whether they have previous crimes or are wanted by international provisions and crimes.

The Syrian politician indicated that the regime "assigned a security officer affiliated to it and who is in Belgium to cooperate with the European Union and provide them with the real names of the refugees who do not have any document proving the Syrian name."

 

Millions of Dollars

The Syrian regime makes millions of dollars as migrants are forced to keep their passports valid, and receives these funds in cash away from banking transactions prohibited by international sanctions.

In January 2020, a report issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights confirmed that the regime uses the issuance of passports to finance the war against all those who demanded a political and democratic transition, and to humiliate its opponents.

The report indicated that the Immigration and Passports Authority has exaggerated its role and is now extorting and looting the Syrian society's money with the aim of weakening and humiliating it.

The system grants a passport for two and a half years to citizens of abroad, whether they left legally or illegally, through one of their relatives or their legal representative, in return for 800 dollars for the urgent on the same day, and 300 dollars for the ordinary in a week.

The consulates of the regime abroad issue the urgent passport for 825 US dollars, and the latter has its own privacy; It is immediately printed , while the normal value of 325 dollars comes from Syria, so it takes longer, up to a month, to give it.

This material cost is the highest in the world in granting a country a travel document to its citizens, especially since the regime succeeded in limiting the extraction of that document to its own hands from the beginning to be an inexhaustible financial resource that has no alternative for millions of immigrants and refugees.

The regime's interior minister admitted obtaining $21.5 million in passports issued to Syrians outside the country in 2020, while in 2018, it amounted to about $41 million.

The number of passports he issued inside the country in 2020 amounted to about 143 thousand ordinary passports, and 75 thousand and 714 urgent ones, and the value of the sums received amounted to 3.3 billion Syrian pounds, according to the same Ministry of Interior.

 

Reasons and Concerns

The Syrian Abdullah Hashem, the owner of a tourist office in Turkey, believes that the lack of passports is because "France stopped printing Syrian passports."

He explained to Al-Estiklal that there is a great demand from Syrians to obtain passports, due to the deteriorating living situation in Syria, which pushed people to leave the country and pushed young people to leave Syria.

He asserts that "the demand now to travel and leave Syria is great because the living situation has become complicated and intolerable in light of the lack of daily income, the lack of services, and the chronic fuel and electricity crisis."

He asserts that "the regime is only concerned with collecting money and hard currency, so it wants to solve the nut crisis at any cost."

The Syrian residing in Turkey clarifies that "the passport crisis at the regime's consulate in Istanbul extended to the end of August 2021," noting that "this date can be extended again."

He says, "The passport crisis is a humanitarian disaster that has fallen on the heads of Syrians residing abroad, because it hinders the renewal of their residencies in the Gulf countries and Europe."

He points out that "in Turkey, a valid passport is required for at least 6 months to renew the tourist residency for only 4 months, which is a short period given the presence of nearly 700,000 Syrians who hold this type of residency."

He notes that "more than 3 and a half million Syrians hold the Temporary Protection Card (Kimlik) issued by the Turkish states, whose holder does not need a Syrian passport as a condition of residence."

"Renewing passports at the regime's consulate in Istanbul is financially and psychologically exhausting, as it is issued with a validity period of only two and a half years, while the Syrians pay hundreds of dollars for the issuance or renewal," according to Hashem.

He confirms that there are about 3,000 Syrians who have currently booked passport renewal appointments at the regime's consulate in Istanbul.

Hashem did not rule out that this was a "thoughtful" move by the regime to extract additional money from bribes and grant passports in particular through brokers in exchange for large sums of dollars, which means filling its treasury from the pockets of citizens.

It seems that the rush to secure the passport has finally been made by the Syrians at home; They are linked to obsessions that are being generated more than ever before, and all of them are linked to the economic situation.

This is what the owner of the tourist office envisages by saying: "There are fears that the system will set certain conditions for the issuance and renewal of the passport at home, such as if he has a foreign flight reservation or residence in a country whose owner wishes to renew it."

 

Ministerial Sarcasm

It was clear the feature that the former Syrian Economy Minister, Mohammad Nidal al-Shaar, wanted to convey, when he recounted his suffering with the urgent passport renewal in the amount of $800 for two years from the regime’s consulate in the Emirate of Dubai.

Al-Shaar concluded, through a mathematical process, that he pays $1.09 every day, which means an amount of 90,000 per month, which, according to him, is "more than the salary of any employee under the rank of a minister in Syria."

He concluded his words in a sarcastic manner, saying: "I mean, I have been Syrian for two years? Why are you confiscating my Syria?"

In the face of the accumulation of crises created by the regime, the financial factor remains the most worrying for Syrians, with the countries of the world insisting on adopting the passport issued by the regime, and the failure to find an alternative solution that would grant someone the right to issue this document.