DAMASCUS, SYRIA (AP) – Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Friday, his office said, marking his first visit to an Arab country since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011.
In a statement posted on its social media pages, the office said that Assad met with Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
The two discussed expanding bilateral relations between their countries, it said.
The visit sends the clearest signal yet that the Arab world is willing to re-engage with Syria’s once widely shunned president.
It comes against the backdrop of the raging war in Ukraine where Assad’s main ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is pressing on with a military offensive, now in its fourth week, raining lethal fire on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv.
Syria has supported Russia’s invasion, blaming the West for having provoked it.
Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League and boycotted by its neighbours after the conflict broke out 11 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the war, which displaced half of Syria’s population. Large parts of Syria have been destroyed and reconstruction would cost tens of billions of dollars.
Arab and Western countries generally blamed Assad for the deadly crackdown on the 2011 protests that evolved into civil war, and supported the opposition in the early days of the conflict.
When asked about Assad’s visit to the UAE, United States’ (US) State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Washington was “profoundly disappointed and troubled by this apparent attempt to legitimise Bashar Al-Assad, who remains responsible and accountable for the death and suffering of countless Syrians, the displacement of more than half of the pre-war Syrian population, and the arbitrary detention and disappearance of over 150,000 Syrian men, women and children”.
Assad has very rarely travelled outside the country during Syria’s civil war, only visiting Russia and Iran.
With the war having fallen into a stalemate and Assad recovering control over most of the country thanks to military assistance from his allies, Arab countries have inched closer toward restoring ties with the Syrian leader in recent years. The UAE re-opened its embassy in Syria in late 2018 in the most significant Arab overture towards the Assad government, though relations remained cold.
Last fall, the Emirati foreign minister flew to Damascus for a meeting with Assad, the first visit by the country’s top diplomat since 2011. The US, a close Emirati partner, criticised the visit at the time, saying it would not support any normalisation with Assad’s government.
Syria badly needs to boost relations with oil-rich countries as its economy is being strangled by crippling Western sanctions and as it faces the task of post-war reconstruction. The UAE is also home to thousands of Syrians who work in the Gulf Arab nation and send money to their relatives at home.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency said the country’s de facto ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan welcomed Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad at his palace in Abu Dhabi.
