After 12 years of isolation, Syria will be reinstated into the Arab League at the summit in Saudi Arabia. A diplomatic coup for ruler Assad. Shame on those who suffered under him.
Will he, as a human, ever get over what he had to experience? Omar Alshogre takes a deep breath and pauses. “That’s a very good question,” he says, and you can feel how difficult it is for him to answer. “No, I’ll never be done with it, but I take the memories with me and I try to use them for myself. As a fuel for my life.”
Omar Alshogre spent three years in Syrian prisons as a teenager and was cruelly tortured after taking part in demonstrations against the Assad regime at the age of 15 at the beginning of what was then known as the “Arab Spring”. His father and several cousins were killed. The 27-year-old left Syria as a refugee, is now studying at the renowned US University of Georgetown and is active in exile for a Syrian opposition group.
It is victims like Omar Alshogre who look at what is happening in their home region with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust. Twelve years after its expulsion, Syria is reinstated in the Arab League. At the summit meeting in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, President Bashar al-Assad takes the stage from which the international alliance had excluded him in 2011 in protest at his brutal actions against his own people. After more than a decade on the sidelines, the pariah becomes a partner again.
Cynicism or Realpolitik?
How could this happen? Torture, barrel bombs, poison gas – are the other powerful in the Middle East so indifferent to the crimes that Assad is accused of that they let the Syrian president sit at the table again? The Arab League’s decision shows that “this region is so often so cynical,” says Joseph Bahout, a political scientist at the American University in Beirut.
What some call cynicism, others call strategic calculation or simply realpolitik. A year ago, the United Arab Emirates began to rehabilitate Assad and invited him to a state visit. While the Syrian government, which is internationally isolated with a few exceptions, was happy to make urgently needed contacts for its economically ailing country, it was important to the rulers in Abu Dhabi to pry Assad away at least something from his great supporter, Iran.
Other Arab states followed suit. Even those who had long bet on Assad’s military defeat and supported opposition and Islamist groups in Syria now seem to have come to the realization that Assad won the war. Neighbors like Lebanon and Jordan hope that an agreement can be reached with Damascus on the repatriation of refugees. Assad is ready to talk, speculating on financial aid, which is urgently needed in Syria after more than a decade of war and the devastating earthquake earlier this year.
Riyadh demonstrates will to power
The Arab League’s decision to readmit Syria also has another message. It is a sign of strength – namely of the summit host Saudi Arabia. The monarchy in the Gulf under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has long been attempting to present itself as the region’s center of power, based on the wealth of its oil and gas reserves. As a player who confidently represents his own and Arab interests, forges alliances with countries like China and Russia on an equal footing. As a country that does not allow itself to be impressed or lectured by the West. Especially not in human rights issues.
What are the people in the Arab world saying about the decision to reinstate Syria in the state alliance? Omar Alshogre, the tortured democracy activist from Syria, misses protests in the countries of the region. “That’s my biggest disappointment,” he says. “Until we Arabs learn to show empathy for one another, like the Europeans did with Ukraine, we will never achieve democracy and freedom.”
However, he says he expected nothing less from the largely autocratic heads of state in the Arab League. As correct as their decision twelve years ago to exclude Syria was, the about-face now comes as little surprise. “They have remembered their true position – that on the wrong side of history.”