Whither Syria and the Middle East?

Hussein Haridy
Tuesday 17 Dec 2024

It would be prudent not to make predictions about the political future of Syria. Before former president Hafez Al-Assad seized power there in 1971, Syria had witnessed several coups d’etat. The Arab countries have not forgotten them.

 

The Middle East is in turmoil, and no one has a clear view of how the overall regional situation will develop in the years ahead.

Syria has embarked on a perilous transition under the leadership of a rebranded terrorist who is soon to be accepted as the “respected” leader of a major Arab power whose stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity have been key to regional security.

From 7 December, the day the regime led by the Al-Assad Dynasty came to a sudden end, the major international and regional powers have been expressing their hopes and fears as to the future of Syria, one that no power can guarantee or foresee.

The US sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region, where he visited Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. The talks centred on the situation in Syria and how the regional powers could help the new interim regime in Damascus manage the transitional period and ultimately steer it on the road towards an inclusive and participatory form of government.

 On 14 December, the Jordanian government, after a meeting between King Abdullah II and Blinken a day earlier, hosted a ministerial meeting in the port city of Aqaba that focused on Syria and the ways the UN, regional powers, and Western governments could help the new Syrian regime establish an open political system while assisting it in overcoming the acute economic and financial situation that has befallen what was once a prosperous and self-sufficient country before the so-called Arab Spring of 2011.

In remarks to the press after the Aqaba meeting, Blinken said that the “agreement” reached in the meeting “sends a unified message to the new interim authority and parties in Syria on the principles crucial to securing much-needed support and recognition.” When asked whether the US administration had had contacts with the “interim regime” in Damascus, he answered in the affirmative.

The countries and organisations that met in Jordan last Saturday included the Arab Ministerial Contact Group on Syria (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and the Arab League) and Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, France, Germany, Turkey, the UK, the US, the EU, and the UN special envoy to Syria.

The meeting expressed its full support for Syria’s unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty. It set out principles that it called “fundamental” in determining its approach in dealing with the situation in Syria.

These stressed, first, that the political transition in Syria must be Syrian-led and Syrian-owned. The second principle follows from the first and said that the transition should produce an inclusive, non-sectarian, and representative government based on the principles embodied in UN Security Council Resolution 2254 of 18 December 2015.

The meeting stressed its support for the mandate of the UN special envoy to Syria, as expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 2254. It requested the UN secretary general to “scale up” the presence of the United Nations in Syria. 

The Joint Statement released after the ministerial meeting raised two significant demands. One asked for the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria. The second related to terrorism, and strangely enough, to extremism, as if the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, the Al-Nusra Front until it was rebranded in 2016, had never itself been an extremist organisation. 

The statement emphasised the importance of combatting terrorism, including preventing the reemergence of terrorist groups. It goes without saying that a main concern was that the Islamic State group (IS) could take advantage of the fluid situation in Syria to rear its head once again.

The statement expressed highly qualified support for the political authorities in Damascus. Some of the participants in the meeting were behind the decade-long efforts to topple the Al-Assad government. Those countries are now doing their best to mobilise regional and international support for the one-time terrorist organisation ruling Syria today. 

Other countries at the Aqaba meeting were not certain that a former leader of an offshoot group of Al-Qaeda could all of a sudden become a believer in representative government, the respect for human rights and women’s rights, and the right of religious and ethnic minorities to live as equal citizens in an open society.

It would be prudent not to make predictions about the political future of Syria. Before former president Hafez Al-Assad seized power there in 1971, Syria had witnessed several coups d’etat. The Arab countries have not forgotten them. However, some world and regional powers have been pushing the Arab countries hard to deal with and support those who took control of Syria on 8 December.

Blinken was right when he told reporters on 14 December that the US appreciated some of the positive words that “we have heard lately” in Damascus. But he added that what really matters is “action and sustained action.” I believe that several Arab countries, apprehensive about the true intentions of the new rulers of Syria, would agree with Blinken. 

As for the Israeli government and its reaction to the changes underway in Syria, suffice it to say that the Israeli military has destroyed the Syrian Army, wrecking in just ten days what it took Syria five decades to build. 

It was also announced on 15 December that Israel would begin building settlements on the Occupied Golan Heights. The reason given was that the Israeli government wants to bring in new Israeli settlers. The other day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would keep the Golan Heights “forever.”

What was the reaction in Syria?

HTS leader Abu Mohamed Al-Golani, aka Ahmed Al-Sharaa, commented that he was “not in a battle” with Israel. This answer could explain, among other considerations, why the US and Western governments are so eager to start dealing “officially” with the new rulers, whom I would call appeasers, in Syria.

As a footnote, Egypt has rightly and understandably decided that all Syrians will now need an entry visa before travelling to Egypt. We should not throw caution to the winds.


* The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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