Syria reinstated in the Arab League after more than eleven years of absence

Bashar al-Assad is no longer persona non grata there. The Arab League decided, Sunday May 7 during a meeting in Cairo (Egypt), to reintegrate the Syrian regime into the Arab League. He was dismissed in 2011 because of the repression of a popular uprising that degenerated into a bloody war.

Some observers believe that the Syrian president could even attend the annual summit of heads of state of the organization, on May 19 in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). This is a dramatic turnaround considering that in 2013 the anti-Assad opposition was able to take Syria’s seat at an Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar.

Surge of solidarity after the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria

Several Arab countries had supported rebels at the start of the war, which has since become a battleground between foreign forces. The conflict has killed at least half a million people. If the diplomatic warming had been preparing for months, Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia and Iran, also benefited from the surge of global solidarity after the devastating earthquake of February 6.

The president and his ministers have thus seen the representatives of many Arab countries march through Damascus, which had hitherto refused to normalize their relations with Syria, some even making their departure from power a condition sine qua non. Damascus is now betting on full normalization with Arab countries, in particular the wealthy Gulf monarchies, to finance the costly reconstruction of the country with its infrastructure ravaged by conflict.