2023-05-20 13:32:43
- Jeremy Bowen
- BBC International Affairs Editor – Lebanon
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman welcomed the presence of Bashar al-Assad at the Arab summit in Jeddah
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad participated in the Arab League summit hosted by Saudi Arabia, marking the most significant admission so far that he had won the war once morest his opponents.
He was welcomed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, although only a decade ago the Saudis funded armed anti-Assad militias.
Now the Saudi crown prince wants to reshape the Middle East, and he needs Syria on his side.
In his speech to the summit on Friday, Assad insisted that Syria always belongs to the Arab world. But other countries should not interfere with what happened within their borders.
He said, “It is important to leave the internal affairs of the people in each country because they are the most capable of managing them.”
Assad meant by the people: the leader of the state and his supporters. And the princes and presidents participating in the summit have imprisoned thousands of their opponents.
Syria returns to the League of Arab States and continues to normalize Arab-Syrian relations
Syrians who criticize Assad and blame him for the destruction of their country view what happened in Jeddah with fear, including all the Syrian refugees I spoke to in Lebanon.
Lebanon, this small and poor country, had to bear the more than a million Syrians who fled the war.
More than a million Syrians have fled to Lebanon to escape the 12-year-old civil war
Now, many Lebanese are fed up with this situation, which has made them present the Syrians as a convenient scapegoat for their country’s chronic economic and political problems.
In the past few weeks, the army has deported regarding 1,500 of them across the border at gunpoint, sometimes the Syrians leave without their children and other times the children are forced to leave without the parents.
A refugee family, speaking on condition of anonymity, spoke of life in a town near Beirut where a curfew has been imposed on Syrians.
The children are expelled from school, and the turmoil in their lives is shown through the miserable drawings made by their teenage daughter. Their father looks on as autocratic Arab leaders embrace Bashar al-Assad with disdain and fear.
“The Assad regime is a dictatorship – like other Arab regimes. They help each other, they cooperate once morest the people,” he said.
For those residing in a refugee camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Assad’s presence in Jeddah was another crushing blow.
Nasser and Marwa, a married couple who have been here since 2013, fear that Assad’s return to the Arab League will be a pretext for more deportations.
Marwa said she thanked God every morning that she had not been deported.
But she added, “Now we are always afraid of raids. I always imagine that they will come and take all the men and deport them.”
Nasser, his wife Marwa, and their daughter Lilas live under threat of deportation from Lebanon to Syria once once more
Her husband, Nasser, said he would face the possibility of conscription into the Syrian army if he returned. He fled Syria to avoid fighting in the ranks of the regime forces. He is very concerned regarding what will happen to his wife and their 18-month-old daughter Lilas if they are forced to return.
Nasser was disgusted by the Arab League’s decision to re-admit Assad.
“After all he’s done, they host him. I don’t understand that, following all the killing, destruction and misery in Syria – it’s not acceptable,” he said.
Syria and the Assad regime are still under US and European sanctions. Amnesty International said Assad had “turned Syria into a slaughterhouse”.
Amnesty International said the UK government should “strongly oppose any attempt to enhance Assad’s international standing”.
Some members of the Arab League agree with this proposition. Qatar, which has also funded the armed opposition in Syria, does not agree with Assad’s gradual return to Arab acceptance.
image copyright Getty Images
Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, suffer from the smuggling of the drug Captagon, which is manufactured in Syria
But for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, they believe that the Assad regime is a Middle Eastern reality and that they need to influence in Syria, and in addition to their broader geopolitical plans, there are other reasons for wanting a rapprochement with Assad.
Jordan and the Saudis are fighting the spread of a drug called Captagon, which is manufactured in Syria and smuggled to the two countries. It is an amphetamine that was given to fighters to boost their stamina but is now widely used as an anesthetic.
The US and UK have imposed sanctions on specific members of the Assad family who they say are deeply involved in the Captagon trade. Some estimates put the value of this trade in excess of $50 billion annually.
For the United Nations, which is running a massive aid operation in Syria and Lebanon, there is a cautious hope that Syria’s return to the Arab League will allow for diplomatic progress.
Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator for Lebanon, tried to find a positive outcome.
“If what is happening now in the region will help us reach a political solution, then this is a good thing,” Riza said.
But the United Nations does not support refoulement. It insists that Syrian refugees cannot return to their homes until their country is safe and secure. That’s a long way.
Bashar al-Assad destroyed his country to save his regime. There was no justice for his victims.
Now there is a lesson for ruthless authoritarian leaders, particularly his close ally Russia, Vladimir Putin, whose decisive military intervention in 2015 helped the Assad regime prevail.
The conclusion of this lesson: “Wait for the storm to pass and you can withstand your enemies.”
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