How far should the Arab world go in normalising Assad?

When Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan landed in Damascus last week, the first visit by a Saudi official since 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s evident glee was equalled only by the angst and betrayal felt by millions of Syrians. After being ostracised for over a decade, Assad has been making his way back into polite company. Prince Faisal is not the first Arab minister to call on Assad, but his visit carried more significance at a time when there is talk of readmitting Syria to the Arab League. On Twitter and in the Arab media, commentators who usually applaud Saudi policies were notably silent after Prince Faisal’s visit. It’s a tough U-turn to sell. In 2012, at the Friends of Syria summit in Tunis, the Saudis pressed then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to arm the Syrian opposition. A senior Saudi official in the delegation told me that Assad was an occupier and had to be removed. The death toll for Syrian rebels that year stood at around 10,000. Since then, at least 500,000 Syrians have been killed, overwhelmingly by the regime and its allies, Iran and Russia. Another 135,000 have disappeared into Assad’s dungeons, and millions were displaced. Assad remains unchanged and shows no remorse — why then are Arab ministers visiting Damascus? The answer is realpolitik: not only has Assad survived, but he has caused problems that his neighbours can’t solve without him.  Arab officials say that in the short term they’re hoping to get Syrian co-operation on the safe return of refugees, possibly through a UN mechanism co-ordinated with the Arab League. In Jordan and Lebanon, tensions between Syrian refugees and host communities are rising. Another key concern is the flow of the synthetic amphetamine drug known as Captagon from Syria into other Arab countries, especially Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Syria is now being described as a narco-state and its Captagon trade is valued in the billions. Last year, US Congress passed the Captagon Act, calling on Joe Biden’s administration to develop a strategy to disrupt the drug trade, a “transnational security threat”. Overtures to Syria by the UAE then Jordan, which began over two years ago, have so far yielded nothing. As a regional heavyweight, Saudi Arabia might have more luck.  The White House is not encouraging efforts to normalise Assad but neither is it forcefully opposing them. The US has been mostly absent from recent Syria diplomacy efforts. This is not a sign that Assad can slide back formally on to the wider international stage — the moral cost for the west would be too high. Years of sanctions and court cases in the US, France and Germany involving dual citizens seeking justice also stand in Assad’s way. Germany has successfully prosecuted a mid-level Syrian security official for war crimes and crimes against humanity; he is now serving a life sentence. Other architects of Assad’s brutal system of detention and torture — such as the feared security chief and trusted Assad aide, Ali Mamlouk — are also subject to indictments. Then there’s the Caesar Act, passed by the US Congress in 2019, which imposes wide-ranging sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities, including non-Syrians and third parties. As a result, anyone hoping to do official business in Syria will think twice. So far, Assad has not been invited to the Arab League summit in Riyadh next month. But even if he is welcomed back into the fold, it is worth remembering that such visits did not save Sudan’s Omar Bashir — nor did it help his country. After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir, he still attended Arab League summits, including in Jordan in 2017 — even though Amman is a signatory to the ICC’s Rome Statute. Bashir even visited Assad in Damascus in 2018. But those were the boundaries of his respectability.  Only after Bashir was deposed was Sudan removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and slowly reintegrated into the wider international community. But its transition to civilian rule erupted spectacularly earlier this month when Bashir’s former lieutenants-turned-peace negotiators who helped overthrow him went to war with each other. There is no sign of another uprising in Syria, and no generals who look likely to depose Assad and battle for control of the country. Yet the lead-up to the crisis in Khartoum carries a lesson for those dignitaries beating a path to Damascus. Compromising with tyrants — whether they be sitting in a presidential palace or wearing fatigues — without leverage, deterrence or accountability, is a recipe for tragic failure.