Syria: Bashar al Assad returns to the world stage with disaster diplomacy

Last week’s powerful earthquake catapulted the authoritarian Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into the world arena, giving him the opportunity to return to the international stage, through catastrophic diplomacy.

As the death toll from the region’s deadliest earthquake in a century rose, Assad, for a long time an outcast for bombing and torturing his own people during the Syrian civil war, he received a steady stream of sympathy, help and attention from other countries.

Arab leaders who had rejected it for a decade picked up the phone and called. Senior UN officials stopped by his office, offering help and posing for photos. Planes loaded with aid have landed from more than a dozen countries: allies such as Russia, Iran and China, but also from Saudi Arabia, which until then had only sent aid (and weapons) to the rebels trying to overthrow Assad.

“There is no doubt that now is a good time for Assad,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “A tragedy for the Syrians is a blessing for Assad, because no one else wants to manage this mess”.

Touring earthquake-ravaged Syrian cities over the past week, Assad was, for once, able to blame nature, not war, for the destruction in his country, as he railed against Western enemies whom he accused of “politicizing ” the crisis.

The catastrophe has strengthened the slow effort of a handful of Arab countries Assad returns to the international fold. The UAE, which is spearheading this effort, sent its foreign minister to Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Monday to meet with Assad for the second time this year.

On Wednesday, the UAE increased its earthquake donation to $100 million, a quarter of the entire United Nations emergency fund for Syria.

In response to these overtures, Assad, who has a reputation for hardliners, made a rare concession: He allowed UN aid convoys to use two additional border crossings from Turkey to channel aid directly into UN-controlled territory. opposition, for the first time since the beginning the civil war started 12 years ago.

However, beyond gestures and goodwill, little has changed in Assad’s background, in particular, harsh US and European sanctions imposed in response to the use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, the forced removal of residents from opposition strongholds and other abuses.

Large earthquakes can be dangerous to beleaguered leaders.

In Mexico in 1985, and again in Turkey in 1999, weak government responses to major earthquakes fueled public anger that led to major policy changes, including the ascension of Turkey’s strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The February 6 earthquake exposed the sorry state of Syria under the Assad regime. After a decade of fighting, the government has regained control of much of Syrian territory, thanks to ruthless tactics and the help of allies such as Russia and Iran. The front lines have mostly calmed down and major clashes are rare.

But that left Assad in charge a fragmented and moneyless country which is only partially under his control.

The swathes of northern and eastern Syria are controlled by its enemies: Islamist rebels, Kurdish fighters and Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces. About 900 US soldiers remain in the country, hunting down remnants of the Islamic State group, whose leader was killed in a US military raid in February last year (and whose successor was killed less than nine months later).

And the Syrian economy has gone haywire, weighed down by chronic shortages of food and fuel. Millions of Syrians have fled to Turkey, other Middle Eastern countries or Europe; those who remain are exhausted.

The days following the earthquake revealed the pyrrhic nature of Assad’s victories. When international rescue teams poured into neighboring Turkey, only a few made it to Syria. The aid that came from Iran and Russia was vastly insufficient, showing the limits of the alliances Assad had relied on to isolate himself from most of the world.

“The idea that Russia and Iran would come to the rescue is fading”says Dareen Khalifa, Syria expert at the International Crisis Group. “They only come when there is a battle, not when the average Syrian is struggling.”

In Syria, the 7.8-magnitude earthquake and a powerful aftershock hit hardest Idlib, the densely populated opposition-controlled province in the northwest, which has so far accounted for four-fifths of the 5,500 deaths reported by the United Nations. The death toll in Turkey has surpassed 36,000.

But even in government-controlled areas of Syria there are chronic shortages of medicines, medical supplies and heavy machinery such as bulldozers, and rescue teams have had to resort to hammers and bare hands in a desperate search for survivors.

Abdul Qader Dawalibi, an official in the Aleppo governor’s office, called on the United States to lift sanctions and allow the import of urgently needed heavy machinery.

“Every day more buildings are collapsing. And every day more people are left homeless,” he said.

Aleppo is particularly vulnerable to an earthquake because many of its buildings have been shelled by Assad’s forces during the war. Last December, the authorities announced they would demolish the 1,500 weakest structures.

In the days following the earthquake, Syrian relief teams reached only 5 percent of affected areas due to a shortage of manpower and equipment, 35 aid groups said in a statement.

“The international community has failed the Syrian people by not reacting quickly enough,” the statement said.

The growing sense of urgency about the need to fill this gap works in Assad’s favor.

Earthquake diplomacy makes it “easier, cheaper and more justifiable for a number of countries to talk to him,” said Hokayem, the analyst.

For the UAE, the moves towards Assad are part of a sometimes contradictory foreign policy in the region, which has also included normalizing relations with Israel. Another prominent backer is Algeria, which has been pushing Syria to rejoin the Arab League.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about this week was the first rescue plane from Saudi Arabia It landed in the northern city of Aleppo, the first in more than a decade of warfare.

Such moves dismay Syrians who want Assad to face justice for his crimes.

However, there are few signs that the US or Europe will ease sanctions against Assad and his inner circle, although the US has temporarily eased some restrictions aimed at allowing the free flow of funds for earthquake relief.

“Syria’s status as a pariah state will not change drastically,” says analyst Khalifa.

Even among supporters, Assad’s embrace falters. Some hope to reduce the influence of Iran and Turkey in Syriaanalysts say. For others, it’s a reflex reaction to Western pressure. But above all, they appear to be driven by a cool realpolitik, a tacit acknowledgment that Assad’s grip on power is iron-clad and unlikely to be challenged anytime soon.

“No one is more seriously trying to overthrow Assad,” says Aron Lund, a Syria expert at the Century Foundation. “They are just looking for the conditions of their integration and survival.”

More than ever, Assad must show the Syrians that he can rule with more than violenceLund said. “Syrian society is exhausted. Its stability was under threat even before the earthquake, and now people are desperate,” she said. That doesn’t necessarily indicate regime change, she added.

“But it could complicate for Assad in a way that will make him uncomfortable.”

c.2023 The New York Times Society