Arab states see a path to progress through Syria. It could be bumpy.
A camp for internally displaced people in al-Bab, in northern Syria, in May 2018. Syria's civil war has left an estimated 6.8 million displaced internally, while more than 5 million fled to neighboring countries.
Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/File
AMMAN, Jordan
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for years persona non grata, is set to travel to Riyadh Friday to attend an Arab League summit.
It’s a stunning turnaround and recognition that the regional bloc’s pledge of “maximum pressure” against his regime has failed, more than a decade after the Arab League suspended Syria’s membership and Gulf Arab states mounted a campaign to oust him from power over Syria’s systematic killing of peaceful protesters.
Despite the legacy of the 12-year Syrian civil war – 300,000 civilians killed, 5 million refugees, three foreign armies’ involvement in Syria, and the birth of the Islamic State – Arab states are now reconciling with the Assad regime out of simple realpolitik.
Why We Wrote This
The season of diplomacy blooming in the Middle East is reforging Syria’s ties to the Arab world. Each has something the other wants. But is Damascus willing to play ball?
The Gulf states are eager to extend a spring of cooperation and diplomacy blooming across the region to Syria, a country geographically located at the heart of the Arab world that some leaders have described as an “estranged brother.”
By offering normalization, legitimacy, and badly needed funds to Damascus, they hope to create a willing partner to tackle the issues of militias, illicit drugs, and refugees, all of which are spilling over Syria’s borders.
Yet observers warn that Iran’s influence in Syria and Syria’s sense of impunity over the failure of Arab pressure may encourage Damascus to drive a difficult bargain. And U.S. sanctions and international court cases may limit Arab states’ options.
Normalization with conditions
Friday’s public embrace of Mr. Assad will come weeks after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt held meetings with Syrian ministers in Jeddah and Amman and outlined their conditions for moving normalization forward – steps the Assad government reportedly accepted.
Arab states’ immediate priority is for Syria to stem the production and flow of illegal narcotics to its neighbors; the estimated $4 billion annual business reportedly is a major source of revenue for Mr. Assad and his allies.
Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine, is produced in Syria and smuggled by armed drug cartels through Jordan and then on to Gulf states. Jordan’s military has engaged in multiple deadly firefights with Syria-based drug cartels on Jordan’s borders in recent years and describes the drug trade as a “national security threat.”
Other Arab priorities include allowing humanitarian aid to continue reaching rebel-held northern Syria and systematic steps to allow the return of Syrian refugees – starting with an end to the persecution, arrest, torture, and disappearance of returnees.
Arab states also want Damascus to take legal measures to allow exiled Syrians to regain homes, farms, and properties that have been appropriated by the state or Iranian-backed militias.
“Arab normalization with Syria is driven mainly by bilateral interests and geopolitics,” notes Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi, executive editor of Al Majalla magazine. “In terms of geopolitics, they have decided it is better for Damascus to regain control over the northwest and northeast of the country.”
New way of doing business
If Damascus takes initial steps over the next six months and demonstrates it can, as one Arab diplomat described, “behave as a good actor,” Arab states will warm ties, provide funds to the government to replace its narcotics revenues, and begin discussing financing for reconstruction.
In the long term, Arab states hope that their engagement and financial support will eventually facilitate a Syrian national political dialogue, political reforms, and the reunification of territories currently outside Mr. Assad’s control – the latter a key motivator driving his reembrace of Gulf Arab states.
“Normalization is not only a carrot; it is replacing one way of doing business with another,” says Mohammed Baharoon, director of B’huth, the Dubai Public Policy Research Center. “This is providing a different means of engagement with the Syrian government.”
The shift in the Gulf approach began in 2021, when the UAE and Kuwait reopened their embassies in Damascus. With Saudi Arabia on board after a recent detente with Iran, Arab states are rapidly pushing normalization.
Arab states have another goal: empowering Damascus at the expense of armed non-state actors, particularly Hezbollah and Iran- and Turkey-backed militias whose influence in Syria rivals that of the government.
“An undermined state is problematic, and that is exactly what happened in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen,” says Mr. Baharoon. Arab states, wishing to avoid the mistakes of the Gulf boycott of post-2003 Iraq, hope “statehood can be regained” in Syria, he says.
“Normalization is more of an enabling measure than just a carrot,” he adds.
Overcoming mistrust
Yet Arab diplomats must overcome a recent history of the Assad government’s broken agreements with Jordan and Gulf states regarding drugs and the persecution of returning refugees.
“To say the very least, it is an environment of mistrust and a lack of reliability,” says Mansour Almarzoqi, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Prince Saud Al Faisal Institute for Diplomatic Studies in Riyadh.
Then there is the question as to what extent Mr. Assad is able to meet Arab states’ demands; his regime remains reliant on Iranian military power and aid and the presence of Hezbollah – a bitter rival of the Gulf states.
However, with March’s restoration of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, brokered by China, Arab states believe there is an opening to positively engage Damascus and transform what was a proxy war with Tehran into a peaceful competition for influence in Syria.
“This is a step-by-step, quid-pro-quo approach,” notes Dr. Almarzoqi. “We are still far away from any full normalization and a return to Syria’s role prior to the crisis. We are in the stage of exploring full normalization.”
Skepticism remains. Not all Arab states are as bullish about the potential of normalizing with Syria, particularly Jordan and Qatar.
Tellingly, Jordan carried out airstrikes in southern Syria last Monday targeting a notorious drug kingpin and a drug lab, one day after the Arab League voted to readmit Syria.
According to Arab diplomats and observers, the airstrikes, which were not coordinated with Damascus, were a message from Jordan and a foreshadowing of an “alternative” way of doing business: If you fail to take real steps to tackle drugs and militias, we will take matters into our own hands – normalization or no normalization.
Proponents of normalization believe Damascus, eager to regain legitimacy and territory, will follow through.
“It would be very difficult to imagine that the Syrian government, out of this entire experience, did not learn anything,” says Mr. Baharoon of B’huth.
Damascus, in addition to craving legitimacy, faces acute economic and humanitarian problems; 15.3 million Syrians need humanitarian assistance.
Syria has taken some modest steps recently.
Last week the Assad government extended the passage of aid to rebel-held territories for another two months and ordered Iranian militias across the country to lower the Iranian flag at bases, checkpoints, and on vehicles.
Sanctions and justice
If Mr. Assad is being embraced by the very leaders who once wished to overthrow him, there will be two elephants in the room in Riyadh: international justice and Western sanctions.
The Caesar Act, imposing U.S. sanctions that went into force in 2020, and multiple cases in European courts against the Assad regime alleging crimes against humanity and the systematic killing of civilians, will limit how much financial aid and economic cooperation Arab states can dangle as carrots to Damascus.
“The Caesar sanctions have put a ceiling on Arab normalization; I think they, along with these court cases, are big challenges,” says Mr. Hamidi, the Syrian journalist.
In addition to justice for Syrians killed, disappeared, and dispossessed, there are the outstanding issues of the autonomous Kurdish-run regions, and Turkey’s and Russia’s military presence on Syrian territory.
“This is just the beginning of a long, long process,” says Mr. Hamidi. “I hope the Arab countries have the stamina for it.”