Politics & News

Does Syria’s isolation in the Arab world end with its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia?

Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has set a clear goal and strived to achieve it as quickly as possible. The most recent was Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan’s visit to Syria in April. This was the first since the Syrian crisis broke out in 2011.

During the visit, the Saudi foreign minister discussed in Syria the necessary steps to achieve a comprehensive political settlement of the Syrian crisis that ends all its repercussions and reaches national reconciliation and contributes to Syria’s return to its Arab surroundings and the resumption of its natural role in the Arab world.

The visit comes days after a Saudi initiative to host a ministerial consultative meeting in Jeddah. In this meeting, the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq participated.

The visit also comes less than a week after the visit of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal Al-Miqdad, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on April 12, days after he visited Egypt, followed by a visit two days ago to Algeria, from which he moved to an Arab movement to return Syria to its Arab incubator, initiated by the United Arab Emirates. The United Nations received Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March 2022 and 2023, and then he visited Oman last February.

Important Visit

The official Saudi Press Agency, “SPA”, said that the visit came “within the framework of the keenness and interest the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia attaches to reaching a political solution to the Syrian crisis. This preserves Syria’s unity, security, stability, and Arab identity, and returns it to its Arab surroundings.”

After his arrival, the Saudi Foreign Minister met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

During the meeting, they discussed efforts to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis. This solution preserves Syria’s unity, security, stability, Arab identity, and territorial integrity, in a way that achieves the good of its brotherly people.

The two sides discussed “the necessary steps to achieve a comprehensive political settlement of the Syrian crisis that ends all its repercussions, achieves national reconciliation, and contributes to Syria’s return to its Arab surroundings and the resumption of its natural role in the Arab world.”

 

The Saudi Foreign Minister stressed to the Syrian President, “the importance of providing a suitable environment for aid to reach all regions in Syria, creating the necessary conditions for the return of Syrian refugees and displaced persons to their areas, ending their suffering, enabling them to return safely to their homeland, and taking more measures that would contribute to the stability of Syria.”

Semantics & Messages

The visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister, whose country will host the upcoming Arab Summit next May, to Syria, and the importance and weight of its diplomacy at the regional and international levels, carry significant messages and indications, most notably the following:

– The Saudi Foreign Minister’s visit, the first since 2011, carries a clear message of support for the UAE’s efforts aimed at returning Syria to its Arab incubator.

The visit by the Saudi foreign minister, a month before the Kingdom hosts the Arab Summit scheduled for May 19, reinforces the expectations of Damascus returning to the League of Arab States after suspending its membership in 2011 or taking a serious step on this path at that summit.

The visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister to Syria, which was preceded by the visit of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to Syria on February 12, will contribute to encouraging more Arab countries to conduct similar visits on the way to normalizing relations with Syria and resuming Arab relations.

The visit of the Saudi foreign minister to Syria will encourage the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to engage in a comprehensive political settlement to the crisis that his country has been suffering from since 2011.

The normalization of relations with Syria through that visit and other upcoming Arab visits to Syria will contribute to reaching solutions that sustain humanitarian support for Syria in the current circumstances.

The visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister to Syria will contribute to resolving the positions of the countries that have so far resisted Syria’s return to the Arab League.

The most significant aspects of Saudi-Syrian relations

Following the outbreak of protests in Syria, which soon turned into a bloody conflict in 2011, several Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, severed diplomatic relations with Damascus.

 

With the prolongation of the conflict and its high political and humanitarian cost, the UAE has led in recent years efforts to return Syria to its Arab embrace, stressing that a political solution is the only one to end the Syrian crisis, and stressing the importance of finding an effective Arab role in the efforts of a political solution and helping Syria return to its Arab surroundings.

The UAE has already translated this approach on the ground through more than one station, which began diplomatically with the reopening of its embassy in Damascus in December 2018 and culminated in receiving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March 2022, on his first visit to an Arab country in 11 years, before it received him again last March, about a month after he visited the Sultanate of Oman on February 20, as part of the steps of a Syrian-Arab rapprochement witnessed in the past few years, launched by Abu Dhabi, and accelerated after the earthquake that struck Syria.

These efforts contributed to creating an Arab climate supportive of Syria’s return to its Arab embrace, especially after the devastating earthquake on February 6.

Saudi openness towards Damascus appeared after the earthquake, with Saudi aid planes landing in Syria. This was the first since Riyadh severed relations with Damascus.

However, the restoration of Syrian-Saudi relations was not, of course, the result of that moment, as it was preceded by practical steps, initiated by Russia in 2015, which entered the mediation line.

At the time, the media circulated a meeting that had been arranged in Jeddah between the head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, Major General Ali Mamlouk, and Saudi officials, without any official statements issued by the two sides confirming or denying these reports.

Russian attempts to restore momentum to relations between Arab countries and Syria did not stop, and Russian officials announced these attempts and their desire for Syria to return to the Arab League, but these attempts remained locked up in diplomatic rooms without any progress that required an official announcement.

Saudi-Syrian relations continued to move at a slow pace. This paved the way for official visits by Syrian ministers and officials who participated in conferences in Saudi Arabia. Both sides sought to depoliticize it.

Saudi humanitarian openness to Syria following the earthquake was accompanied by positive diplomatic messages.

On February 19, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah confirmed that dialogue with Syria is required, stressing that isolation is futile.

On March 8, bin Farhan said that increased communication with Syria might pave the way for its return to the Arab League.

The Saudi minister reiterated that consensus is growing in the Arab world that isolating Syria “does not work,” and that dialogue with Damascus is “necessary,” especially to address the humanitarian situation there.

On March 23 of the same month, Saudi state television said that Riyadh “is in talks with Syria to resume consular services.”

On April 12, in the first official visit to Saudi Arabia since the start of the estrangement, Faisal al-Miqdad, the Syrian Foreign Minister, visited Jeddah, where he discussed with his Saudi counterpart “the necessary steps to achieve a comprehensive political settlement to the Syrian crisis that ends all its repercussions, achieves national reconciliation, and contributes to the return of Syria to its Arab surroundings, and the resumption of its natural role in the Arab world.”

The two sides welcomed the start of procedures for resuming consular services and flights between the two countries.

On the 14th of the same month, the Kingdom hosted a ministerial consultative meeting in Jeddah. In this meeting, the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq participated. Its agenda also discussed “reaching a political solution to the Syrian crisis that ends all its repercussions and preserves Syria’s unity.”

The final statement included drawing up a comprehensive road map of 10 items with humanitarian, political, and diplomatic dimensions. This is to restore Syria to its Arab surroundings.

The meeting included laying down the rules and foundations for an Arab solution to the Syrian crisis. It also stressed the importance of Arab leadership in ending the crisis. Not only that but also setting up the necessary mechanisms for this role.

In a practical step to implement the outcomes of the meeting, which called for an Arab leadership role in efforts to end the Syrian crisis, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan recently visited Syria, the first of its kind since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011.

The visit is a crucial step towards dismantling one of the most prominent Arab crises that have been carrying on for more than a decade. This is part of the political efforts the region is witnessing to eliminate crises and support the peace and development strategy.

Successive Arab stances supporting Syria’s return to its Arab embrace, which has accelerated in recent times, all prove the correctness of the Emirati vision. This vision was proactive in taking diplomatic, political, and humanitarian steps to support Syria’s return to its Arab embrace.

 

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