Syrian dictator welcomed at Arab League Summit despite murders.

President Bashar al-Assad’s Strategy Pays Off as Arab States Welcome Him Back

After more than 12 years of civil conflict that killed 350,000 people, President Bashar al-Assad’s strategy appears to have paid off as Arab states that once shunned him welcome him back into the Arab League. According to sources familiar with his thinking, al-Assad has always seen time as an ally in the Syrian civil war, along with the Iranian and Russian firepower that helped him defeat his enemies.

A Diplomatic Triumph

His presence at an Arab summit in Jeddah on Friday hosted by Saudi Arabia appears to seal his rehabilitation in the region – a diplomatic triumph alongside the military victory he proclaimed years ago, though much of Syria is outside his grasp. It would have been unthinkable earlier in the conflict when Gulf Arab states swung behind rebels battling to oust al-Assad, and then U.S. President Donald Trump branded him an “animal” for using chemical weapons – an accusation he routinely denied.

Geopolitical Shifts

Assad, 57, owes his survival in large part to Iran and Russia. But geopolitical shifts in the Middle East have strengthened his hand as the region’s most powerful states pursue entente over conflict, among them al-Assad’s Shi’ite Islamist backers in Tehran and their Sunni rival Saudi Arabia.

Reforms and Repression

Upon becoming president in 2000, al-Assad appeared to adopt liberal reforms, an optimistic moment painted as “the Damascus Spring”. He released political prisoners, allowed free-speaking salons, made overtures to the West, and opened the state-run economy to private companies. His marriage to British-born former investment banker Asma Akhras helped foster hopes he could take Syria down a more modern and reformist path after his father’s three-decade rule. But with the political system he inherited left intact, signs of change quickly dried up.

• Dissidents were jailed and economic reforms contributed to what U.S. diplomats described, in a 2008 embassy cable released by WikiLeaks, as “parasitic” nepotism and corruption.
• While the elite did well, drought was driving the poor from rural areas to slums where the revolt would blaze.

The Civil War

His rule came to be defined by the civil war which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets only to be met with deadly force. Assad saw the war as a foreign-backed conspiracy against a proud Arab state that opposed the United States and its Middle Eastern allies, especially Israel. Helped by Russia’s air force and Iran-backed militias, al-Assad clawed back the bulk of Syria in years of conflict, deploying siege warfare to recover areas such as eastern Ghouta – a tactic condemned as “medieval” by U.N. investigators.

Accusations and Denials

The determination with which he set about crushing his enemies drew comparisons with his father, who defeated insurgents in Hama in the early 1980s. Justifying his response, al-Assad compared himself to a surgeon cutting into a wound. “Do we say to him: ‘your hands are covered in blood?’ Or do we thank him for saving the patient?” he said in Syria’s parliament in 2012. Even in the early years of the conflict, as rebels seized town after town, he appeared confident of victory.

• But while he took back most of Syria, swathes of the country remained outside state control, cities were flattened, the death toll topped more than 350,000 people, and a quarter or more of the population fled abroad.
• Assad consistently denied accusations the state was to blame. He also denied the army had dropped barrel bombs – barrels packed with explosives that kill indiscriminately.
• He dismissed tens of thousands of photos showing the torture of people in government custody as part of a Qatar-funded plot.

Arab States Welcome Him Back

As fighting died down, al-Assad accused Syria’s enemies of turning to economic warfare. And in the aftermath of the deadly Feb. 6 earthquake, Arab states which once backed his opponents began publicly opening doors to him once more.

Western sanctions remain in place, however, with no sign at all that will change soon.

Source: Reuters

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases