Syria is breaking its diplomatic isolation. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was invited on Wednesday by Saudi Arabia to the next Arab summit, scheduled for May 19 in the kingdom, which must mark his return among his Arab peers after more than eleven months of isolation. This invitation comes after Syria’s reintegration into the Arab League on Sunday, from which it was expelled in 2011 following the popular uprising that degenerated into civil war.
The head of state “received an invitation from King Salman” of Saudi Arabia to participate in the annual summit being held this year in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the Syrian presidency announced in a statement. “Holding this upcoming summit in Saudi Arabia will strengthen joint Arab action,” the Syrian president said. The last annual summit of the Arab League in which the Syrian head of state had participated was held in 2010 in Sirte in Libya. President Assad was subsequently ostracized by his peers for his suppression of the uprising sparked in the wake of the Arab Springs in 2011.
The United States denounces the arrival of Assad
In this context of regional warming, Turkey is also beginning to reconnect with the Syrian regime. The foreign ministers of the two countries met on Wednesday in Russia, another power very close to Bashar al-Assad, for the first time since 2011. The two ministers met in Moscow in the presence of their Russian and Iranian counterparts and the Russia has offered to draw up a roadmap to normalize relations between Damascus and Ankara. The Syrian president had recently emerged from his pariah status, benefiting in particular from a surge of solidarity in February after an earthquake that devastated large areas of Syria and Turkey.
But the United States has indicated that it does not approve of reconciliation between Arab countries and Damascus. Syria “does not deserve to be readmitted to the Arab League,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday. Involving regional and international actors, the war in Syria has claimed around half a million lives. Nearly half of Syrians are now refugees or internally displaced, and swathes of the territory still escape government control.