QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – While the whole world was celebrating Christmas and preparing for the New Year, news emerged of an unannounced and unexpected meeting holding Syrian and Turkish defense ministers in Moscow in the presence of Russia’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu.
As the year 2022 was nearing a close, Syria was a predominant issue in world politics and media owing to the breakthrough in Syrian-Turkish relations, and an attack carried out by the sleeper cells of the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) on a security center of the Internal Security Forces of North and East Syria (Asayish) in the former ISIS de facto capital of Raqqa, northern Syria.
While the ISIS-related occurrence in Raqqa seemed out of context and a bizarre one, however, the Moscow trilateral meeting was a remarkable thaw in decade-long marred relations that were finally put on the tracks after ten years of derailment.
However, the issue was not closed in the first days of January 2023 when it was announced a second meeting probably holding foreign ministers of Syria and Turkey was slated for the second part of January, another event took place in Damascus that could not be passed unnoticed. On January 4, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was visiting the Syrian capital as another boost to the Syrian government.
Sheikh Abdullah affirmed the commitment and keenness of the UAE to support the efforts made to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis that restores the security and unity of Syria and meets the aspirations of the brotherly Syrian people.
The UAE has been one of the first Arab countries to hold the conviction that an Arab presence is needed in the Syrian issue.
Following the falsity of the Arab Uprising in 2011, and as Syria was isolated from its Arab fold in a bid by a number of Arab countries as a kind of pressure on the Syrian government, the UAE among many others cut ties with Damascus. However, since the very beginning, the position embraced by the UAE towards Damascus was a more lenient one compared to other Arab countries.
At the time, Syria garnered world attention. By juxtaposing events taking place in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, among many others, Arab countries and notably the Gulf states became involved in backing and aiding the Syrian opposition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
With the conflict becoming rapidly and largely an armed one in the second part of 2011, the Syrian government forces began to lose large swathes of territories in different parts of the country to the opposition forces in a couple of years. However, that was going to be changed when late in September 2015 Russian Federation forces came to the aid of the Syrian government. That was a remarkable and decisive intervention by Russia and a game-changer to the benefit of the Syrian President. Opposition with their dismembered and often opposing factions were losing ground.
Since then, the idea of the “regime change in Syria” has been an evaporating one. For Abu Dhabi, the change of heart came in December 2018 when the country first opened its embassy in the Syrian capital. A move seen then a striking one. Following seven years of chilly relations, that was a very diplomatic boost for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The UAE seems to play a pivotal role in Middle East politics. Recently, the country has been rotating in Russian orbit. In October 2022, the president of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan paid a visit to Moscow where he was received by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Konstantinovsky Palace.
In September 2021, Mohamed bin Zayed’s right-hand man and tycoon Khaldoon al-Mubarak visited Moscow to boost economic investment between the two countries. The same year, the International Criminal Police Organization, commonly known as Interpol, reintegrated Syria as a full-right member.
It is the very same Abu Dhabi that assumed a leading position in the “Abraham Accords” a series of treaties normalizing diplomatic relations between a number of Arab countries and Israel inaugurated by the UAE and followed suit by Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco in a period of five months in the second part of 2020. These four Arab states joined Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel. The agreements were called “The Abraham Accords” in honor of Abraham – the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Right now, the UAE seems to assume the same role though differently in direction and essence. While the Arab country could be helpful to Syria in the diplomatic arena, the UAE could be a driving force for the dilapidated Syrian economy. Other Arab countries could follow suit.
In March 2020, as the world was shackled by Covid-19, then Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in a gesture that signaled what was to follow spoke on the phone with Assad offering Damascus assistance in the fight against the pandemic.
Mohammed bin Zayed told Bashar al-Assad that the Syrian people “will not stand alone” during the pandemic. A year later, on the sidelines of Dubai Expo 2020, Syrian Minister of Economy and Trade Mohammed Samer al-Khalil met with his Emirati counterpart, Abdullah bin Touq al-Marri.
Later, Emirati Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan met Assad in Damascus.
In march 2022, Syria’s President astoundingly paid a visit to the UAE. While al-Assad had paid visits to Tehran and Moscow during the course of the years of the conflict in the country, the March 2022 visit to the UAE signaled that the Arab world was willing to engage with the once widely isolated leader of Syria. It was al-Assad’s first-ever visit to an Arab country in nearly a decade.
A role, a great one, is being played by the UAE to re-admit Syria to the Arab League and retain its seat which was suspended in November 2011.
Since 2018, when the UAE embassy was opened in the Syrian capital, Abu Dhabi – to the objection of the United States – has taken small but firm and steady steps for better relations with Damascus. January’s visit by bin Zayed cannot be looked at as an isolated one from the trilateral conference taking place in Moscow on the final days of December 2022.
While the normalization process with Turkey goes on step-for-step, the return of Syria to the Arab fold seems to be a mere question of time, not a rosy one, however. There seems a new orbit shaping in the Middle East.