The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday reopened its embassy in Damascus in the latest sign of efforts to bring the Syrian government back into the Arab fold.
The UAE broke ties with Syria in February 2012 as the repression of nationwide protests demanding regime change was escalating into a devastating war.
Nearly seven years later, the Emirati flag was raised again during a ceremony attended by diplomats and journalists.
Photo: EPA-EFE
An acting charge d’affaires has already started working, an Emirati statement said, adding that the UAE is “keen to put relations back on their normal track.”
It said that the resumption of ties aimed to “support the sovereignty and independence of Syria” and face “the dangers of regional interferences.”
Rumors that the Emirati embassy might reopen had circulated for days as renovation work was seen getting under way at the building.
Photo: AFP
A visit to Damascus by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir earlier this month had been interpreted by some observers as a sign of regional efforts to end Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s diplomatic isolation.
A few hours after the UAE’s announcement, Bahrain signaled its intention to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which has been closed since March 2012.
The Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was “anxious to continue relations” with Syria and wants “to strengthen the Arab role and reactivate it in order to preserve the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and prevent the risk of regional interference in its affairs.”
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in November 2011 as the death toll was escalating and several regional powers bet on al-Assad’s demise.
The conflict has now killed more than 360,000 people.
Al-Assad’s seat at the helm, which he inherited from his father in 2000, appeared to be hanging by a thread until Russia’s 2015 military intervention turned things around.
Government forces and allied militia have since steadily regained significant ground. They now firmly control the Damascus region and several key trade routes in the country.
The past few days have seen a flurry of diplomatic activity that looks set to continue until the next summit of the Arab League, due in Tunis in March.
“Recent discussions on this issue have not yielded a consensus,” Arab League Deputy Secretary-General Hossam Zaki told reporters in Cairo on Monday.
However, he added: “This does not rule out a possible change of the Arab position in the future.”
Ali Mamlouk, Syria’s intelligence chief and a key figure in the al-Assad regime, travelled to Egypt last week on an official visit.
With military operations winding down in several parts of the country and the capital fully secure, Damascus is also working on breaking its physical isolation.
Trade with Jordan resumed over the past few weeks, after the reopening of a border crossing, and Thursday saw the first commercial flight to Tunisia in years.
An ariplane operated by Damascus-based Cham Wings Airlines completed the first flight between the two countries since 2011.
“This trip is the reopening of tourism links between Syria and Tunisia,” said Moataz Tarbin, the head of the tourism firm that organized the flight.
It was not yet clear whether more Arab countries, several of which were accused by al-Assad of once supporting militants and rebels, could follow in the UAE’s footsteps.
The UAE and Bahrain are two of six Gulf Cooperation Council nations that took a tough stance on Damascus in 2012 and eventually recognized an opposition umbrella group as the representative of Syria.
Warming up to al-Assad is seen by some regional powers as a way of luring Syria away from the exclusive regional influence of Iran.
“An Arab role in Syria has become even more necessary to face the regional expansionism of Iran and Turkey,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said on Twitter.
Tehran has been a staunch supporter of al-Assad’s government and has expanded its military footprint in Syria throughout the course of the conflict.
Last week’s announcement by the White House that US troops would be pulled out also cleared the path for Turkey to muscle in on Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria.
US President Donald Trump on Monday claimed that Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional archenemy, had agreed to finance Syria’s huge reconstruction needs.
“Saudi Arabia has now agreed to spend the necessary money needed to help rebuild Syria, instead of the United States,” Trump said on social media.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.