The 32nd Arab summit, which was held on Friday May 19 in Saudi Arabia, officially endorsed the return of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad to the Arab League.
The 32nd Arab summit, which was held on Friday May 19 in Saudi Arabia, officially endorsed the return of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad to the Arab League. For Bashar Al-Assad, the objective is to capitalize on this diplomatic success. Most Arab countries, with the exception of Qatar and Morocco in particular, will send back ambassadors and reopen their diplomatic missions in Damascus. But the next crucial test for Syrian power as it emerges from quarantine is Turkey.
>> From exclusion to normalization, why Syria rejoined the Arab League
Whoever wins the presidential election on Sunday, May 28 (renewal of Recep Tayep Erdogan or election of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu), the process of normalization between Syria and Turkey will continue, and no doubt accelerate.
The issue between the two countries concerns the administration of the regions of northeast Syria by the Kurds, sworn enemies of Turkey, who could bear the brunt of a geopolitical shift against them, because Bashar Al-Assad has not never hidden that he intended to regain control of the entire Syrian territory.
A “front of refusal” of Westerners
Faced with the return to grace of Bashar Al-Assad, Westerners have formed a “front of refusal”by setting three “No” : no to the lifting of sanctions against the Syrian regime, no to normalization and no to reconstruction as long as there is no political solution in sight, including the opposition. However, the latter has almost disappeared from diplomatic radar screens.
For the Syrian raïs, after having recovered his seat in the Arab League, it is now a question of capturing the financial windfall of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular. He probably remembers the reconstruction of Beirut after the Lebanese civil war in the 1990s, which was mainly financed by petrodollars from the Gulf.
Gulf demands end to Syrian captagon production
But for that, the oil monarchies demand that Bashar al-Assad stop the production of captagon, a synthetic drug that floods the Arabian Peninsula and brings billions of dollars to the Syrian regime every year.
In this give and take, the Syrian economy, completely exhausted, could then receive a breath of fresh air. Except that to invest in Syria, you still have to get the American green light. Washington maintains a regime of very harsh sanctions against the power in Damascus, cWhich means that the showdown between President Joe Biden and the Gulf emirs on the Syrian issue has only just begun.