The Syrian president’s diplomatic agenda has never been so full. The terrible earthquakes of February 6, which caused more than 6,000 deaths on the Syrian side (44,000 on the Turkish side) served as a pretext for several Arab countries to resume speaking more officially with Bashar el-Assad. “The day after the earthquake, those who are in charge are the United Arab Emirates”, tells us in this long video format Fabrice Balanche, geographer and specialist in the Middle East.
Phone calls, promises of humanitarian aid, official visit to the Sultanate of Oman, receptions of foreign ministers in Damascus… the diplomatic effervescence under way in the Middle East is gradually putting the Syrian president back at the center of a game which he had been excluded for a long time because of its very violent repression of demonstrations in 2011. The war that followed left more than 500,000 dead and 12 million displaced.