Syria's Assad Regime Gaining Traction Regionally

The Assad regime in Syria sent foreign minister Faisal Mekdad to the UAE in recent days where he gave an interview with the Al-Ain media portal regarding the regime's emerging regional policy following over a decade of civil war. The regime was recently re-admitted to the Arab League despite not having operational control of all the territory of Syria and several million of its citizens living outside the country as refugees in neighboring Turkey and elsewhere, including European countries.

The report in Al-Ain included a statement by Mekdad that "Arab countries must shoulder their responsibilities by preventing the expansion of the Israeli war, whether on Palestinian lands or outside them, noting that this matter appeared clear during the recent meeting of Arab foreign ministers to confront the dangerous developments on the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian arenas.”

He also spoke at length on the subject of the regime's relations with Turkey, which has deployed troops on Syrian soil, claiming that it is necassary to keep Kurdish factions from using that territory to launch terrorist attacks inside Turkey.

"Ankara is interested in eliminating terrorism and the return of Syrian refugees, and we add to them the withdrawal from Syrian territory and the elimination of armed organizations,” Mekdad said.

The Arab League is taking many steps to reassert itself following the Arab Spring and the accompanying Syrian Civil War, the rise and fall of the Islamic State terrorist group, the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises which rocked the region in recent years. Arab countries and the League itself struggled to influence the course of these events, while non-Arab regional powers including Iran, Turkey and Israel exerted considerable influence on all of them.

Syria and Israel are two issues that have continued to sharply divide members of the Arab League, with some countries wanting to improve relations with one or both countries and others fiercely opposing this for different reasons.

Non-regional powers including the US, European countries, Russia, China and increasingly India are also working with their local partners and allies to move the agenda in different directions, often at cross purposes. The Arab League has long struggled to balance the competing interests of its constituent members.