The Syrian government announced that it will open a new consulate general in Bonn on Thursday. According to a statement shared with Focus by the Arab Republic’s embassy, Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al‑Sheibani will officially inaugurate the consulate in the afternoon on February 12.
The idea of establishing an overseas post in Bonn had already been discussed earlier. In January the “General‑Anzeiger Bonn” reported that the Syrian government had informally asked the city whether the existing embassy building on Andreas‑Hermes‑Straße could be converted into a consular office.
Opening a new consulate general in Bonn is expected to relieve the strained embassy in Berlin. That diplomatic mission had been heavily overloaded, especially after the civil war in Syria ended in 2024, when hundreds of Syrians visited daily for passports and other consular services. With the new Bonn office, many Syrians already living in the city and its surroundings now have a local point of contact. In 2022, Bonn’s population of Syrians was nearly 10,000, making it a hub for war refugees; across North Rhine‑Westphalia, 288,000 Syrians resided in 2024.
After the overthrow of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, Syria recently re‑established its diplomatic presence in Berlin. Early this month a change in leadership at the embassy occurred: Damascus appointed Baraa Shukri, the former director of the consular and foreign affairs department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as chargé‑d’affaires. He succeeded Abdulkareem Khawande, who had been dispatched to Berlin during the rule of dictator Bashar Al‑Assad.
Unlike an embassy, which primarily manages political relations with the host country, a consulate general focuses mainly on consular affairs for its citizens and visa matters. Following the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, the Syrian embassy in Berlin was closed for several years. It only resumed operations in 2020, and then only at the level of a chargé‑d’affaires, leaving political relations with Germany largely untouched.