Syria’s Assad to attend Arab League summit as west opposes rehabilitation

The Syrian president is to attend his first Arab League summit in 13 years on Friday as the west and Gulf states clash over his rehabilitation after more than a decade of war against his own people.

Bashar al-Assad will take his seat in Jeddah in a move engineered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that has already led to objections in Washington and London, which say the Syrian leader has shown no contrition for the millions who have been killed and displaced by his forces since pro-democracy protests started in 2011 and no willingness to change his brutal behaviour. The UAE appears to have also deliberately challenged the west by formally inviting Assad to attend the UN Cop28 climate change conference in Dubai in November, which would be his first global summit since the beginning of war.

The UAE is hosting the event and the invitation to Assad poses a dilemma for western politicians such as John Kerry and Rishi Sunak, who if they attend will find themselves in the same room as a man who remains subject to international sanctions for the use of chemical weapons, war crimes and extrajudicial killings. There is no sign that the UAE consulted western diplomats before issuing the invitation.

Saudi Arabia has championed Assad’s return to the 22-strong pan-Arab body, even though some governments, principally Qatar and Kuwait, have qualms. Riyad has argued that the Arab world has to accept pragmatically that Assad has survived the Syrian civil war, and the best way to influence the consequences of his victory is through an engagement with Damascus that will bear fruit over time, including by limiting the influence of Iran, Assad’s biggest military backer.

“We have to invent new ways to meet the challenges facing our countries,” said the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. He will be pressing the largely toothless summit to make progress in ending the wars in Sudan and Yemen.

Many Arab countries, notably Jordan, are desperate to constrain the trade in the illicitly produced drug Captagon, which is seen as a source of revenue for the Syrian regime.

At present there is little sign Assad is willing to make concessions in return for recognition, insisting that Syria will only accept the return of refugees once Gulf states have offered hard cash to reconstruct the country. Iran, a long-term supporter of Assad, has already moved to entrench itself as the regime’s closest backer.

In the west, outrage at the rehabilitation was unconstrained. Raphaël Glucksmann, a French member of the socialist alliance in the European parliament specialising in human rights, said: “Crime pays, that’s the message that is being sent. Bashar al-Assad represents 500,000 dead, children gassed in Ghouta, Sednaya prison, places of death, slaughterhouses for human beings, rape set up as a system. He is the worst criminal against humanity today on this Earth and progressively he returns.” A bipartisan congressional alliance in the US has rushed to ensure the Biden administration stands firm against Assad, even if it requires a breach with Gulf states. The House foreign affairs committee chair, Michael McCaul, introduced a bipartisan Assad Anti-Normalization Act that would impose penalties for those who provide material support to the Assad regime and its partners, and prevents the US government from recognising any government led by Assad. The bill is expected to speed through Congress.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, French Hill, said: “Syria’s readmittance to the Arab League signals to Assad that his barbaric behaviour is acceptable – these steps towards normalisation are reckless. The Arab League’s recognition should not deter the US government from its obligation to sanction Assad in our efforts to dismantle the trafficking and production of Captagon and hold him accountable for his egregious war crimes.”

The bill won the support of James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Syria. “This bill will pressure the Assad regime to account for its mass murder and other war crimes including chemical weapons, and will advance the fight against Isis, support return of refugees and internally displaced people, and block a geostrategic triumph by Assad, Putin and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

The new UK special envoy on Syria, Ann Snow, this week also reiterated that Britain would not support normalisation “without significant behaviour change”, adding that there was no “meaningful or sustained or real peace without justice and accountability”.

Diplomats stressed there had to be progress towards a diplomatic solution consistent with the UN security council resolution 2254. The resolution, the touchstone demand of the west since its passage in 2015, calls for a UN-led conciliation process culminating in fresh elections.

The advent of normalisation is already leading to reports by the Syrian opposition that Syrian refugees in border countries such as Lebanon are being forcibly rounded up to be put on lorries to return to their home country. In Turkey, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the trailing challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has upped his anti-refugee rhetoric in an attempt to secure nationalist votes in the second-round ballot, claiming there are as many as 10 million refugees in Turkey that need to be returned.

Erdoğan will also seek some kind of rapprochement with Assad after his likely re-election. The Kurds in northern Syria, branded and attacked as terrorists by Turkey but partially protected by US troops, worry about the depth of US commitment to them and fear Turkey may strike a deal that leads to Assad re-establishing control of Kurdish areas.

Across rebel-held north-western Syria protests have continued about Assad’s return to the Arab fold.