A Syrian Foreign Ministry delegation has visited Erbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, to advance the opening of a consulate, after years without consular services under the former Assad regime.
Mohammed Al Omar, director of consular affairs at the ministry, said the visit was “the first step towards opening a Syrian consulate that serves our people in Iraqi Kurdistan”.
In January, the Syrian government announced it was planning to open a consulate in Kurdistan as part of efforts to expand diplomatic outreach in the region.
Syria has been recalibrating its relations with neighbouring countries and improving ties with Gulf states and the West.
Damascus has not held an official diplomatic mission in the Kurdistan region, with consular services for Syrians there being handled through the embassy in Baghdad.
No opening date has been announced.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Iraq hosts more than 346,000 refugees and asylum seekers, 88 per cent of whom are Syrian. About 82 per cent of all refugees in Iraq live in the Kurdistan region.
Up until May, about 1.67 million Syrians returned from neighbouring countries. Returns from Iraq increased after procedures in the Kurdistan region were introduced, UNHCR said.
Syria had been the heart one of the world’s largest refugee crises for more than a decade. Following the fall of Bashar Al Assad’s government in December 2024, the global Syrian refugee population had fallen from six million to 4.9 million by the end of the following year.
Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara has held a number of high-level phone calls with Kurdish officials since the start of the year, amid tension and hostilities in the region. Both sides have repeatedly emphasised the need for peaceful dialogue and the protection of both Syrian and Kurdish communities.
In January, fighting between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in north-east Syria ended with an agreement under which the forces were to be integrated into the Syrian state. Some Kurdish-held areas were recaptured by Syrian forces. The agreement has yet to be fully implemented.
Prominent figures such as Masoud Barzani, the former president and leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party, Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, and the semi-autonomous region's President Nechirvan Barzani mediated between the Syrian government, the SDF and the US.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi and US special envoy Tom Barrack were also present at some of the meetings.
