A smiling Bashar al-Assad has been brought in from the diplomatic cold in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, receiving a warm welcome to a summit of the Arab League.
Arriving on a Syrian Airlines jet, Assad took his place at the summit for the first time since the 22-member bloc suspended his country in 2011 after a violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators that led to civil war.
His return without any preconditions on future treatment of millions of displaced Syrians marks a turning point in the Middle East, and suggests Assad’s endurance and brutality has paid off. His critics say his rule inside Syria remains fragile, with large parts of the north of the country outside his control, and millions of refugees implacably opposed to his rule in the countries surrounding Syria.
Assad’s arrival was marked in the streets of Jeddah, where the Syrian flag was displayed prominently. At the opening family photo he shook hands with and hugged the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been pursuing a policy of regional rapprochement, restoring diplomatic ties with Iran and ending the kingdom’s year-long war against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.
In his initial meetings, Assad met Saudi officials as well as the increasingly dictatorial Tunisian president, Kais Saied, who is waging his own crackdown on dissent in the birthplace of the Arab spring protests that swept the region in 2011. “We stand together against the movement of darkness,” Assad said, apparently referring to extremist groups that came to dominate the Syrian opposition as his country’s civil war ground on, and which drew a large number of recruits from Tunisia.
Saudi Arabia, following a lead from the United Arab Emirates, has stopped funding or supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition, deciding that their near decade-long efforts to dislodge Assad have failed – a policy that is not being followed by western powers, who are determined to maintain sanctions against the regime.
On Wednesday, Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said the return of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the region was among the priorities that the Arab League was working through in coordination with Syria. Bou Habib denied there would be any forced return of displaced Syrians from Lebanon, a key sticking point in talks with the Assad government after its return to the Arab fold.
In a strongly worded statement, the Syrian Opposition Coalition described the inclusion of Assad at the summit as a “deplorable endorsement of his heinous crimes against the Syrian people [that] … disregards the sacrifices made by Syrians over the past 12 years, insults the victims who await justice, and abandons the Syrian people who yearn for freedom.”
Although the Arab League is often dismissed as a divided and often pointless talking shop, Riyadh hopes the summit will make progress on ending the fighting in Sudan and in Yemen.
The recent Chinese-brokered Saudi-Iranian agreement has raised hopes that peace is possible in Yemen, where Iran has been backing the Houthi rebels who have been fighting to dislodge the Saudi-backed, UN-recognised government. It is not clear if Iran will end its support for the Houthis or on what terms.
For different reasons, the most senior leaders of Morocco, Oman, Algeria, Kuwait and the UAE did not attend the summit. The UAE, a stronger backer of the Southern Transitional Front, a group fighting for the independence of southern Yemen, takes a different view to Riyadh on how to end Yemen’s civil war. The UAE insisted the absence of its president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was due to a prior engagement rather than a diplomatic disagreement.
US politicians are rallying to block the Arab effort to bring Assad back into the international community, taking a somewhat harder line than the US administration has so far. “Our position is clear. We are not going to normalise relations with the Assad regime and we certainly don’t support others doing that,” the state department’s deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in Washington on Wednesday.
The surprise guest in Jeddah was the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who arrived wearing his trademark fatigues. He said he wanted to outline his peace plan for Ukraine to the Arab states.
He tweeted on his arrival that his agenda included “political prisoners in Crimea and temporarily occupied territories, the return of our people, peace formula, energy cooperation. KSA [Saudi Arabia] plays a significant role and we are ready to take our cooperation to a new level.”
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