Damascus finds a place in the diplomatic game, until it becomes a frequent partner? Saudi Arabia and Syria announced on Tuesday, May 10, the return of their diplomatic representations to each other, after eleven years of Riyadh’s break with the Damascus regime, isolated due to the civil war which has ravaged the country. The oil-rich Gulf monarchy has recently moved closer to Syria as well as Iran, a major supporter of President Bashar al-Assad. “Saudi Arabia has decided to resume the work of its diplomatic mission in Syria,” the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. Ryad seeks to “develop joint Arab action”, he said.
Shortly after, Damascus issued a parallel announcement: “The Syrian Arab Republic has decided to resume the activities of its diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia,” said the Syrian state agency SANA, citing a source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The decision of Saudi Arabia, leader of the Gulf countries and regional heavyweight, comes two days after the reintegration of Syria into the Arab League, announced Sunday in Cairo. Damascus was expelled from the pan-Arab organization in 2011 because of the bloody repression of a popular uprising, triggered in the wake of the Arab Springs, which degenerated into a civil war.
Involving regional and international actors, the war claimed around half a million lives. Nearly half of Syrians are now refugees or internally displaced, and swathes of the territory still escape government control. Gathered in Cairo, the heads of Arab diplomacy voted unanimously on Sunday for the Syrian delegation to “seat again in the Arab League”. President Assad himself is now “welcome if he wants to” on May 19 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for the organization’s annual summit of heads of state, said its secretary general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit. .
“Strengthening cooperation”
According to the Kuwaiti academic Bader Al Saif, this rapprochement would be an important signal, while “Saudi Arabia had until then been skeptical about the normalization of relations with Damascus”. So how to explain this shift? “Drugs, terrorism and refugees are the three pillars of a ticking time bomb for the Levant, the Gulf and the Middle East region. No serious action can be taken on any of these issues without dealing with a one way or another with the regime of Bashar el-Assad. The three files are at a standstill or face challenges”, explains, in a long thread, the analyst on Twitter.
For its part, Damascus had indicated that it wanted to “strengthen cooperation” while the regime is betting on normalization, in particular with the rich monarchies of the Gulf, to finance the costly reconstruction of a fragmented country with devastated infrastructure. Bashar al-Assad had recently emerged from his persona non grata status, benefiting in particular from a surge of global solidarity in February after an earthquake that devastated large regions of Syria and Turkey. `
A context of regional warming
The Syrian president also pulled out of the regional game thanks to the unexpected rapprochement between two great rivals, Riyadh and Tehran, his loyal support. The Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faisal ben Farhane, even made an unprecedented visit to Damascus in mid-April, where he was received by Bashar el-Assad. In this context of regional warming, Turkey is also beginning to reconnect with the Syrian regime, the foreign ministers of the two countries to meet on Wednesday in Russia, another power very close to Bashar el-Assad.
But in Doha, the Syrian opposition is fuming. “Crimes cannot be rewarded by a return to the table of Arab countries,” said Bilal Turkia, representative of the Syrian opposition in Qatar, in a statement on Tuesday. According to him, the return of Syria to the Arab League gives “a green light to more brutality on the part of this regime whose behavior will not change”. Opposed to normalization with Bashar al-Assad, like the United States and European powers, Qatar is home to the only Syrian embassy run by the opposition.
For Washington, Syria “does not deserve to be readmitted to the Arab League”. “Our position is clear: we have no intention of normalizing relations with Bashar al-Assad and his regime,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters. Same story for London. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaking alongside Antony Blinken, said he was “very uncomfortable” with the Arab League’s decision: “The brutality against the Syrian people cannot not be ignored. And the UK certainly isn’t going to sweep that under the rug.”
In addition to Saudi Arabia, many other Arab countries have taken steps towards Damascus, in particular Egypt, Oman and Tunisia. The United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in 2018.