After more than 11 years of severing ties between Damascus and the Arab world, the United Arab Emirates, by receiving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a surprise visit, on Friday, is preparing for his country’s return to the Arab embrace, according to what analysts believe.
It is Assad’s first visit to an Arab country since the outbreak of the conflict in his country in 2011, causing nearly half a million deaths and the displacement of millions of people.
The UAE, the rest of the Gulf countries (except Oman), and most Arab countries severed diplomatic relations with Damascus in February 2012, coinciding with the suspension of the membership of the League of Arab States, after the suppression of angry waves of protests and demonstrations calling for democracy and freedom in 2011, which pushed the country into a devastating war and conflict. As long as his parties and supporters varied.
Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the United States in the region, supported the Syrian opposition, with all its spectrum, in its movement against the regime of President al-Assad.
But at the end of 2018, Abu Dhabi reopened its embassy in Damascus, while the question of Syria’s return to the Arab League remains a matter of contention.
Bahrain, which closed its diplomatic mission in Damascus in March 2012, also announced the “continuation” of work in its embassy in Syria, in reference to its intention to reopen it.
And last November, the Emirati foreign minister met Assad in Damascus in the first visit of a high-ranking Emirati official to Syria since the conflict began. This step sparked US condemnation of efforts to normalize relations with a president described by Washington as a “dictator”.
“Leader of the Arab World”
“The UAE sees itself as a ‘leader of the Arab world, and hopes that other countries will follow in its footsteps,'” Bader al-Seif, a professor at Kuwait University, told AFP. “We can understand its reception of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in this context.”
Seif said that the UAE “pressed for Syria’s return to the Arab League, regardless of the regime’s role in killing and displacing many Syrians.”
For his part, Nicholas Heras, a researcher at the New Lines Institute, explains to AFP that the UAE seeks “to be a decision-maker in the Middle East, and beyond that in Eurasia, and this includes having all parties to the conflict resort to it as a trust.”
Through this role, Abu Dhabi is trying to open up to the region’s governments, coinciding with the decline of the United States’ role in the Middle East, and refocusing its attention on Asia.
The Syrian conflict was complicated by the multiplicity of international parties involved in it, and Moscow, through its direct military intervention in 2015, played the most prominent role in tipping the scales in favor of the regime forces, after it had lost large areas during the first years of the war.
On the other hand, in the northeast of the country, the United States supports the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose backbone is the Kurds.
Heras adds that Assad is a key ally of Moscow, and the Emiratis see this as an opportunity to negotiate a new reality in the Middle East, “contributing to the stability of the region, because Assad won his civil war, and there is a nuclear power that fully supports him.”
Al-Assad’s visit to the UAE comes a few days after the UAE Foreign Minister visited Moscow, where he met his Russian counterpart, at a time when Russian forces have continued their invasion of Ukraine since February 24.
This warmth in the relationship with Damascus is considered a small diplomatic victory for Moscow, as Abu Dhabi received one of the few presidents who supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the world’s largest crude oil exporters with strong ties to the West and Moscow, have so far avoided taking a stand against Russia.
Heras believes that the UAE views Russia as “an important player in the Middle East for years to come, and an external power whose policies can be more predictable than the United States.”
He added that Abu Dhabi no longer wanted to contribute to “American efforts to maintain an international consensus not to normalize with Assad,” according to what was reported by “AFP.”
American disappointment
“We are deeply disappointed and concerned by this apparent attempt to legitimize Bashar al-Assad,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Saturday in a statement.
“We urge countries that intend to engage in dialogue with the Assad regime to look seriously at the atrocities committed by the regime,” Price added.
But Badr al-Seif, on the other hand, indicated that Washington at the same time called on its allies in the region to assume more responsibility for their security affairs.
He said, “The UAE is participating in exactly that, which means that there will not be a permanent agreement with the United States, as each country seeks to achieve its interests.”
He believed that “UAE-US relations will not be negatively affected by this visit.”
On the other hand, Bassam Abu Abdullah, director of the Damascus Center for Strategic Studies, believes that “the Syrian issue cannot be viewed as it was 11 years ago.”
He pointed out that the Vienna talks to revive the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted some countries to “reposition and evaluate the Syrian issue with a new look.”
In a country where at least ninety percent of its population lives below the poverty line, more than half of its population has been displaced and its infrastructure has been destroyed, Damascus is also seeking to restore the warmth of its relations with the countries of the region to rebuild the war-torn country.
Abu Abdullah says, “Syria is facing very big economic challenges and needs Arab countries to stand with it.”