Assad is a mass murderer but he won his war, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE have vital interests to protect across the Middle East.
It should have come as no surprise that the Arab League voted overwhelmingly to restore Syria’s membership after more than a decade of suspension. The move isn’t unanimous, with Qatar remaining the primary holdout, and Washington registering muted objections. Yet, while the outrage the vote has provoked is more than understandable, it has long been inevitable.
The protracted isolation of Syria was motivated by clear moral and strategic reasons. The brutality with which the Bashar al-Assed regime put down what began as peaceful, pro-democracy protests has few parallels in the 21st century. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, including through widespread use of chemical weapons.
Torture and summary execution have been systematic, as thoroughly documented by whistleblowers like the former government photographerknown as Caesar. Nearly 7 million Syrian refugees have been forced to flee abroad, with around the same number displaced within the country.
Because of this incredible record of brutality, much of the world, including many Arabs, are dismayed at the practical re-embracing of the dictatorship. Yet there really hasn’t been any long-term alternative for the Arab states ever since the rebel-held parts of Aleppo fell to pro-regime forces at the end of 2016. That functionally ended the main part of the war for what the dictatorship has called “necessary Syria,” the central swath of the country running from the Lebanese border up the Mediterranean coast and inland far enough to encompass all the major cities.
The regime didn’t survive on its own. In the summer of 2015, high-level Iranian delegations traveled to Russia in a bid to convince Moscow that only an intense, coordinated military intervention could save their mutual ally, Assad. That fall, Iranian forces and militias they controlled, including Hezbollah from Lebanon, made a decisive intervention on the ground, with Russia providing crucial command-and-control, air and intelligence support.
Rebel groups were no match for this new coalition, and within a little more than a year the war more or less ended when eastern Aleppo fell to the pro-Assad forces. Fighting continued in peripheral areas, involving Turkey, Kurdish fighters and a small number of US troops in the north; Iranian, Kurdish and US forces in the East; and significant remnants of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
However, re-engagement by the major Arab countries was always a matter of time, because they continue to have significant interests in Syria but no way of securing them. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have led the reintegration of Damascus into the Arab League, have legitimate concerns involving undue Iranian and Hezbollah influence in the country, Syria’s role in Lebanon, Turkey’s role in Syria, refugee return, and drug smuggling and other crimes associated with the regime, to name just a few.
Although Arab countries have made tough-sounding demands of the regime on many of these issues, it’s unlikely functional reintegration will be contingent on their implementation.
Arab governments were hoping to see the back of Assad after the uprising broke out in 2011. But with his survival, they are not prepared to walk away from Syria permanently, and don’t feel they can rely on outside forces like the US, Turkey and Israel to contain the dictator and his foreign supporters.
They’ve concluded their only real option is to hold their noses and try to use diplomatic, political and commercial leverage — was well as aid in helping Syria rebuild its shattered infrastructure — to regain influence in where that country is going.
As usual, the UAE — a small power unburdened by regional and global leadership roles — acted first. This opened the door for Saudi Arabia, a much more important country with regional Arab and global Islamic leadership aspirations, and much more complex domestic politics. (This same pattern applied to recent Gulf Arab rapprochements with Iran.) They have been joined by a set of countries including Algeria, Egypt, Oman and others that never really turned their back on the Assad regime no matter how bloody things got in Syria.
Qatar wants to sit this out because it feels it can rely on Turkey to pursue their common interests, and it wishes to avoid annoying the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups with which it is aligned. But that changes practically nothing.
Washington clearly isn’t happy, but it didn’t provide the Arab League with any practical alternatives to ensure its interests. Hence the rather attenuated US protests. Assad leads a regime soaked in blood. Sadly, the balance of power on the ground in Syria, combined with always-heated regional politics, made this distasteful reintegration inescapable.