AL’s Syria outreach

The Arab League’s decision to end Syria’s suspension after some 12 years has become a point of consternation in some regional capitals. While some of these are along the traditional fault lines — the Saudi camp, the Qatar camp and the Iran camp — geopolitical interests aside, the decision had become a forgone conclusion. This is because the proxy war in Syria — which has seen involvement from world powers including the US, Russia, France, the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkiye — has not really borne any winners.

Meanwhile, most of the other 21 Arab League members have already begun normalising relations with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, seeing that sidelining the Syrian strongman has done little to weaken his grip on power, but has only caused suffering for the Syrian people and a major shift in the region’s geopolitical power balance, mostly in Israel’s favour. Some sources are crediting the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran as being a precursor to the Syria normalisation — Tehran and Riyadh were on opposite sides of the Syrian war — yet others have said a thaw was likely after the humanitarian disaster created by the February 6 earthquake in Syria and Turkiye.

The hope is mainly to stem the spillover of the war, which has cost over half a million lives, mostly civilians, and displaced over half of the population, including over six million refugees abroad. It is also worth noting that a few Arab states are only opposing normalisation on somewhat technical grounds — Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar have all said Damascus should agree to good-faith peace negotiations with the Syrian opposition before being readmitted. This left the US, despite its close ties with most Arab powers, to be left holding the bag. If the US also ends up pulling its support, the Syrian opposition will likely collapse, and Assad will remain in power. While not necessarily ideal, this may be the only way to correct the country’s direction and let its neighbours focus on their own problems.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2023.

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