AfD's Trip to Damascus

Sometime tomorrow....a plane will lift off from Germany, and carry a couple of AfD Party officials (right-wing) over to Damascus, Syria.  Note, it's not a direct flight, and I can't even say that it's limited to one hub or two hubs. 

Purpose of the trip?  They intend to show that Syria is now 'safe'....meaning that the unsafe-label that the Bundestag has granted to Syrians for relocation or migration....is now unnecessary. 

I sat and pondered over this.

First, to get into Damascus International Airport.....there's only four airlines currently supporting flights there.  From Europe?  None.  Moscow will have occasional flights.  Beyond that....the rest are all Middle-Eastern related (Doha, Beirut, Baghdad, Basra, etc).  In a single day, I doubt if they handle more than 20 flights. 

If you were talking about before the war....oh, that's different, they were handling between 5.5 and 6 million passengers a year.

The lack of direct Frankfurt or Berlin flights into Damascus?  That pretty much destroys the first level of the AfD's reasoning.

Then you get to reporting by Deutsche Welle, where they (the four AfD guys) say they will meet with the Assad government.  You really can't be sure of anything they say....being truthful or reliable.  Even Syrians in Germany will grin and admit this.

Finally, we get to the key emphasis here....the AfD guys want to return and hype that the Russians are really ensuring the safety situation, and that peace has returned to Syria. 

Odds of anyone really believing in this trip being productive?  It's hard to say.  Maybe if there were serious peace efforts going on, no Turkish military operations being conducted, and some direct flight two or three times a week into Damascus, I might buy this motivation to change the policy.  But it's just not at the level where you could change the policy. 

The amusing thing that might come out of this?  Assad's people might come and start up a vacation advertisement campaign in Germany.....suggesting it's a great place to spend a week.  Prior to the war, they might have had a point, but today?  No.