El Zabayar was born in
Venezuela, but his parents are from Syria. The lawmaker, who was little
known before his trip to Syria, says he's willing to fight for the
country of his forebears if the United States attacks the Arab nation.
In another picture, El
Zabayar appears in the middle of a group of apparent military men. Like
most of the others, he's holding an assault rifle.
In a recent phone
interview with CNN en Español from Damascus, where he's visiting his
ailing mother, El Zabayar called the U.S. government hypocritical.
"It has a double standard
when it comes to al Qaeda," he said. "We need to think about that. The
world has to start a debate about international terrorism."
Syrian civil war in photos
El Zabayar is a member of
the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. He accompanied the late
President Hugo Chavez when he met with al-Assad in Syria in 2009. The
Venezuelan National Assembly granted El Zabayar a leave of absence to
travel to Syria, and President Nicolas Maduro praises him as a hero.
"He has decided to give
his life for his land, the land of his grandparents, for the peace and
dignity of the Syrian people. Well done, Mr. Legislator. You have
followed your conscience," Maduro said on Venezuelan national television
this week.
Venezuela has a sizable
population of ethnic Arabs who have significant clout and political
power. Tareck El Aissami, who has Syrian and Lebanese parents, is the
governor of Aragua state and former minister of the interior and
justice. Favored by Chavez, he has remained powerful under the new
administration.
Just like El Aissami, a
large portion of the Arab community in Venezuela has aligned itself with
the socialist government. Members of the Arab-Venezuelan Union and the
Sheik Ibrahim Mosque in Caracas marched last September to support
Chavez's re-election.
A group of Venezuelans
of Arab origin protested outside the U.S. Embassy in Caracas this week.
They chanted "Long live Syria!" and "Down with the empire!" They were
waiving Syrian flags, and one demonstrator displayed a picture of Chavez
and al-Assad holding hands up in a sign of victory.
Hindu Anderi, one of the protest organizers, suggested the United States has ulterior motives on Syria.
"Enough of wars
motivated by oil and energy resources. We don't believe the fairy tale
of chemical weapons used against the civilian population in Syria by the
government of Bashar al-Assad," Anderi said.
Maduro also shares that
point of view. In a recently published open letter to President Barack
Obama, the Venezuelan leader called a possible attack against Syria
"unfair, disastrous and terrifying."
The rhetoric from
Caracas, consistently anti-American for more than a decade, may heat up
even more if the United States takes action on Syria.
El Zabayar, the
Syrian-Venezuelan lawmaker, has a rather rosy view of the current
situation in Syria, where a popular uprising spiraled into a civil war
in 2011. "Everything is great," he said. "People are out in the street
doing their normal things. You have to remember that before being
invaded by foreign mercenaries from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Syria used
to be known as one of the safest countries in the world."
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