After over a decade of separation, the Syrian Arab Republic was readmitted to the Arab League this Sunday, in a move that has dealt a blow to Washington’s Middle East agenda, exciting some and causing outrage amongst others. The Syrian war that began in 2011 still hasn’t officially ended, so what impact will this normalization of the government in Damascus have?
For 12 years the Syrian State has been isolated, regarded as a pariah regionally, for its role in a devastating western-led proxy war that has left millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. Most Arab countries took the line that Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, was an evil dictator that massacred his own people and therefore could not continue to remain legitimized regionally. It also appeared early on, during the war, that Damascus would fall to either Daesh (ISIL-Islamic State) or any number of the armed militant groups that had taken up arms against the Syrian government, the most powerful amongst them being Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups.
In April, Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan visited Damascus, signalling the end to Riyadh’s 12-year diplomatic embargo on Syria. Prior to this, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Algeria, all took similar steps to signal an end to their rejectionist policy towards legitimizing the government in Damascus. The decision of the Arab League, which announced Syria had been re-instated over the weekend, came after a closed door meeting between member state foreign ministers at the group’s headquarters in Cairo.
Why is this so significant?
To begin with, this move has consolidated a push to re-integrate Syria into the region diplomatically and economically, it has been on the agenda of Abu Dhabi for years and is aimed at achieving stability. The decision by the Arab League means that Damascus has now been normalized regionally, which parts way with the position held by the United States government, that continues to pursue a policy of isolation, proxy conflict, sanctions, and occupation of Syrian territory. The next natural step is for a long awaited normalization deal between Syria and neighboring Turkey, which will have seismic implications that we will get into further down in this article.
The most staunch regional opponent of the Syrian government has been the government of Qatar, which has been the only Arab nation to vocalize its opposition to normalizing the Damascus government, wanting a comprehensive peace deal first. However, despite Doha announcing that its position has not changed, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed bin Mohammad al-Ansari, said “Qatar always seeks to support achieving Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that,” signalling that it won’t do anything beyond words to counter Syria’s re-integration regionally. This element is important because Qatar was the chief financier of armed militant groups that fought against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) during the war, however, it still does offer support to some of the groups that are isolated to Idlib province, where a safe haven has been created for a number of Al-Qaeda linked groups, the most powerful of which being Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The US Mission In Syria Begins To Crumble
Prior to the war in 2011, Syria was a State that had no dept and was self-sufficient, it was also a popular tourist destination, hosted some of the best universities in the Arab World, and exported to neighboring countries like Lebanon, cheaply. The war severely weakened the State’s economic status, reducing many cities to rumble and racking up over 5 billion dollars in foreign debt by 2021 alone.
Now that nations are forced to navigate in a multi-polar terrain of global power, major options have opened for Syria to finally get back on its feet again. A shift is clearly beginning to occur after the Chinese brokered rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, sparking even more normalization between former adversaries across the Middle East in the past months. The reluctance of Arab nations to become involved with Syria again is now evaporating as a result of this shift, meaning too that it may be easier for China to safely invest in reconstruction. A major advancement would eventually be for Beijing to invest in the construction of a deep-water port on the Western Coast of Syria. The US at this point has become unimportant in the Middle East, with its favorite ally, Israel, proving itself an undesirable pariah regime, even to some of its friendly neighbors.
As the war has remained in a stalemate since 2019, other than occasional anti-terrorism operations it is forced to defend against, the Syrian State has not fought any major battles to retake territory. While Damascus controls the largest portion of the country, there are still large territories occupied by foreign countries, terrorist groups, and paid mercenary forces: Idlib province is controlled primarily by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham; North Eastern Syria is under joint occupation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US military; the al-Tanf province is also under joint US occupation, along with a force of paid mercenary groups; Turkey also controls a small portion of Syrian territory in the North and Israel has illegally occupied the Golan Heights since 1967.
While the problem of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights is a tough one to resolve over night and will involve a war of liberation to achieve, the other segments of Syria, some more vital to the nation’s survival, are within reach of returning to the control of the Damascus government. Now that the Arab world has accepted that Bashar al-Assad is here to stay and his rule is being normalized, there will be no major barrier to preventing the rehabilitation of the nation and reclaiming of territory.
The Ankara-Damascus normalization deal will have huge implications for the future of Syria as well. At this time, the Idlib province remains at a stalemate due to the Turkish military’s presence inside the territory and its approval of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s rule, and there has already been talk of a Turkish withdrawal from the area, which will likely take place following any future deal with the Syrian government. This would then allow for either a compromise deal with the militant groups, or if this fails, a SAA military operation to recapture the territory. The most important development will be in the north-east however, where the US illegally occupies a third of Syria’s territory; this area is the breadbasket of the country, home to around 90% of the nation’s oil and gas, as well as its most fertile agricultural lands.
If Turkey and Syria re-open relations, coordination between both sides will certainly occur in the event that Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launches another attack on the Kurdish armed groups in the north of Syria. In 2018 and 2019, when Turkey launched military operations against the Kurdish PKK and YPG groups, the US military deserted their allies, and in the case of 2019, left Syria completely for the duration of the attack. Washington does not want to risk a confrontation between their own combatants and those of NATO ally Turkey, so it will likely also leave the next time as well. At that point, whether the US government decides to uproot its forces or not, it would take a massive force to prevent the Syrian military and its allies from crossing the Euphrates river to retake their oil fields. As for the SDF, after taking a huge hit from the Turkish armed forces, they will be in a weak negotiating position with the Syrian government. In the event that the US is forced to leave north-eastern Syria, its mercenary forces in al-Tanf will likely depart also and may be encouraged to do so by neighboring Jordan, however, even if it is to remain under occupation, this isn’t a major problem for the Syrian government at this time.
Sanctions will still be applied upon Syria, by both the European Union and the US government, yet in today’s climate this will be much less of an issue than in the year before. Moscow has found a way to survive the most Western sanctions of any nation on earth, which has created more opportunities for Syria in the future. The brutal sanctions have done their damage however, inflicting a humanitarian crisis on the country, according to UN experts.
In reaction to the news of the Arab League’s decision, the US is clearly unhappy, with the region essentially ignoring the repeatedly asserted position of Washington that encourages Syria isolationism. Instead of going along with the sadistic approach preached by the White House, that seeks to starve the Syrian people, the Arab World has decided to pursue collaboration and investment instead.
This current wave of peace and cooperation is upsetting US think-tank “experts,” the most prominent of which is Charles Lister, who recently published a piece for the Washington-based Middle East Institute think-tank, entitled “We’re abandoning Syria and our D-ISIS policy”. Lister, who has met with countless anti-Assad militant group leaders and is one of the staunchest advocates for regime change in Syria, posted on twitter that,
“the Biden admin’s inaction in the face of the normalization of Assad’s regime is paving an increasingly short path towards a U.S. military withdrawal from NE Syria — & the end of a highly effective D-ISIS policy.”
The reason Charles Lister’s statements are important, is because he parrots the official US government narrative on Syria, which is to justify American boots on the ground inside Syria, based upon the claim that they are there to fight Daesh (ISIS). The reality is that Daesh has been reduced to a number of terrorist cells that live in places like caves, occasionally carrying out attacks, or surfacing only when the US claims to have killed the group’s leader whenever they have to justify why they are inside Syria to begin with. It’s a ridiculous argument for any competent individual to make, yet this is the line that Washington is forced to parrot in order to give the pseudo-legal justification to its occupation, which claims that the authorization to fight Daesh in Iraq can technically also be used to fight Daesh in Syria too.
The truth is that the US uses north-eastern Syria as a military launching pad, to spy on and target Iran-linked groups in the region, in addition to holding hostage Syria’s natural wealth in order to strangle the Damascus-based government. The US spent over 1 billion dollars on their CIA operation in Syria, named Timber Sycamore, alone, pouring countless billions more into their various attempts to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Their mission has now failed and the Arab League’s decision has now cemented that fact.
I find it hard to believe but not one word about Russia’s military assistance in this article. That assistance has made it possible what we are witnessing today in Syria. I’m totally puzzled….
Are you puzzled because you feel that it was necessary to highlight this assistance while making the point about what the implications of this move could be (I do not) or because you were under the impression that he had never mentioned that point? Because that overlap has been highlighted at length in countless articles by Robert on this platform.
Ryan you seem well versed on articles by Mr Inlakesh. Kind enough to send me some links on those articles were he mentions the importance of the Russian assistance to Syria. Thanks