The Syrian war ended long ago, but the reconstruction begins now. This Sunday, the Arab League has readmitted Syria into its midst. Gone are the twelve years of ostracism for Bashar al-Assad, for crushing the revolution that, with increasingly Islamist overtones, tried to overthrow his secular, police regime and an ally of Moscow and Tehran.
The Arab foreign ministers have lifted the suspension in Cairo, as announced by the spokesman for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, Ahme al Sahaf. The decision, long supported by the Emirates or Algeria, had more recently added the decisive support of Saudi Arabia or Egypt, eventually overcoming the reluctance of Qatar or Morocco.
Qatar has been, along with Turkey, the great sponsor of the Islamist armed opposition, cornered for years in the northern half of the province of Idlib and one end of Aleppo.
Damascus retaking its seat in the organization is beyond symbolic. This is a green light for Arab capital to contribute to the reconstruction of a country destroyed by the onslaught of the Islamic State and other jihadist forces. A reconstruction that the sanctions of the United States and many of its allies had made
The Arab decision is not purely philanthropic, although the wave of solidarity after the February earthquake helped to accelerate a political turn that had already begun to take place. Riyadh and other capitals view the degree of Iranian influence in its Arab neighbor with displeasure. Shaking hands with Bashar al-Assad will limit his dependence on the Persian country. Damascus and its Arab neighbors also agree on the desire to see the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the Syrian territories currently under occupation. The Arab support strengthens the hand of the Syrian government, which could be favored by a new government in Ankara in a hurry to make peace with Assad and lighten the burden of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri opened today's emergency session in Cairo, saying: "We have a historic responsibility to stand by the side of the Syrian people to help them turn this sad page of their history."
The support of the Arab League is not unconditional, although it is early to know what Bashar al-Assad's concrete commitments are, which could be outlined in the final declaration. In his speech, Shukri stressed that "the Syrian government has the responsibility of reaching a political solution" with its adversaries. But he has also pointed out that "there is no military solution."
Some of the conditions that are expected are the return of the refugees to Syria, revealing the fate of the disappeared and reactivating the committee with the UN and the opposition to draft a new Constitution, a process that has not advanced for years.
Bashar el Asad was one of the countries affected by the gale of the Arab Springs, in 2011, which had the Muslim Brotherhood as the main vector, with undisguised Western sympathy. This democratizing movement not only collided with Bashar al-Assad's regime, but also with others of the opposite orientation, such as that of Bahrain, where it was similarly crushed. Other regimes in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, mobilized against the wave of democratization and supported the overthrow of Mohamed Mursi in Egypt, a year after winning the elections.
The reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Syria has been preceded, in the last two months, by the essential reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Although Israel maintains its periodic bombardments on targets of the so-called "Axis of the Resistance" in Syria and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has threatened to use "all means" to prevent Iran from also equipping itself with nuclear warheads, Saudi Arabia and its Satellite countries have already made it clear that they have no intention of being splashed, much less dragged into a war of this caliber.
The new context leaves the thousand US soldiers occupying territories in northeastern Syria in an even more delicate position, supported by an unknown number of mercenaries. The pretext for their presence, which includes 80% of Syrian oil fields and communication routes with Iraq, is the protection of the Kurdish affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed organization of Turkish origin and at war. with the Turkish state. The Kurdish militia contributed to the defeat of the Islamic State, as did the Shiite militias that came from Lebanon, Afghanistan or Pakistan, hand in hand with the Iranian pasdarans.
The decision does not exactly come as a surprise to the Kurdish armed organization, whose leader in Syria, alias Mazlum Abdi, would have traveled to the Emirates this week seeking mediation to return to the arms of the Assad -primordial protectors of the organization- in the best conditions possible. Bashar al-Assad, however, is as adamant with the Kurdish militia - which he sees as having betrayed him by allying with Washington under the lure of an independent Royava - as with his Turkish enemies. However, his main ally, Vladimir Putin's Russia, now has bigger concerns.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, the HDP, the pro-Kurdish party that does not condemn the armed struggle of the PKK, asked two Fridays ago for the vote in the presidential elections for Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the Social Democratic candidate of an alliance made up mostly of right-wing parties and Turkish nationalists. Kiliçdaroglu is not only from Tunceli (Dersim), the same province as jailed HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas, but has also been an Alevi, a disproportionate percentage of the Turkish far left, since the 1970s.
