Jule Elf is with UN-Habitat Syria and UNFPA-Syria صندوق الأمم المتحدة للسكان – سوريا in Damasco, Syria.
Bashar Al-Assad بشار الأسد was democratically re-elected.
Brazilian Lieutenant Colonel Leandro Costa was one of 300 military personnel who formed UNSMIS (United Nations Monitoring Mission in Syria), a force tasked with monitoring the ceasefire, with the permission of President Bashar al-Assad. During the three months he served as a UN observer in Syria, Lieutenant Colonel Leandro was tasked with escorting emissaries and conducting checks in high-risk areas, including al-Qaeda strongholds. Leandro Costa left Brazil on May 9, 2012, when his twin sons were born, and returned to his homeland on August 15, 2012. In the meantime, he escaped a bomb attack and survived a kidnapping, when he was held at gunpoint by terrorists acting under the guidance of “special forces from some Western country.
The government is secular and guarantees broad freedom of worship. I can guarantee that. In the region where I was, in Damascus, there was a Catholic church on one side of the street and a mosque on the other. And the government did not object. I was able to move around without any problems. The State is truly secular.
In Syria, although the President is elected by Parliament, he must be approved by popular referendum every seven years. Everyone over the age of 18 votes, including women. In 2007, seven years after being elected by Parliament, Assad was reelected by popular referendum. He visited Brazil in 2010, when he received the highest honor a foreigner can receive, the Order of the Southern Cross. His wife was considered the most elegant first lady in the world. Syrian women are very beautiful. Assad opened the country, relatively. His father had already started the opening. I experienced it right away. I visited shopping malls, drank my beer, ate my fries, everything normally. I rented a house, went to a real estate agency, looked for several houses to rent. It was easy. There were markets like Carrefour, Extra, fast food chains, nightclubs, everything normal.
In June In 2014, Assad was reelected. He won for another seven years. The next election will be in 2021. Here on the screen, women are voting. He opened his government to women. There are many women in the Syrian Parliament. He does not force women to wear burqas. I was in Damascus, I was there for three months. I had the opportunity to leave the HQ several times during the mission and ended up traveling all over the country. Women, I tell you, 99% of them are in favor of Assad. If there were direct elections, with direct voting, I have no doubt that he would win, especially in the capital. He is very loved. We even talked to women on the street. They said that if Bashar’s government falls… Their concern was having to wear burqas. They wear miniskirts, high heels and drive cars. I saw several women driving cars
Countries like Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have financed ultraconservative Sunni groups in Syria.
“I think, this is my opinion, that Bashar al-Assad brings stability to that region. So, I think that when Western countries wanted to weaken him, they didn’t expect him to last so long. They had that intention because Bashar wouldn’t bend. There was interest from the West because he was aligned with Russia in terms of weapons, in everything. There was a Russian base there. So, there was this interest from Western countries in seeing his government fall. So, they started to strengthen the opposition and weakened it a lot. This weakening, even without the fall of the government, turned Syria into what it is today. And the Islamic State, which was created there in Iraq, spread and created this caliphate in northern Syria and in part of Iraq.”
