Arab League reinstates Syria after 12 years on the outs in attempt to rebuild Assad relationship

The Arab League’s foreign ministers on Sunday readmitted Syria after 12 years on the outs, as they seek to rebuild a relationship with President Bashar al-Assad and work on resolving the conflict that got him booted.

Qatar and other countries did not want to reinstate Syria and boycotted the meeting. The closed-door Cairo gathering was attended by foreign ministers from 13 of the league’s 22 member states.

Assad has presided over a bloody civil war since 2011, when he violently crushed protests against his rule. The conflict escalated into civil war in which nearly 500,000 have lost their lives. About half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million people has been displaced.

The war-torn Middle Eastern country is still subject to Western sanctions, which means the move won’t necessarily translate to reconstruction funds. The decision does enable Assad to participate in the Arab League’s summit on May 19.

The organization’s goal is to work to resolve the twin crises engendered by the civil war. Refugees have flooded into neighboring countries, and drug smuggling has escalated since the conflict broke out.

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“This doesn’t mean that the Syria crisis has been resolved, on the contrary,” Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. “But it allows the Arab (states) for the first time in years to communicate with the Syrian government to discuss all the problems.”

Those advocating for suffering Syrians felt the move “cruelly betrayed tens of thousands of victims of the regime’s war crimes and granted Assad a green light to continue committing horrific crimes with impunity,” said Laila Kiki, executive director of international advocacy group The Syria Campaign.

The U.S. and U.K. also objected.

While the U.S. supports the Arab League’s long-term efforts to solve the crisis in Syria, officials do not believe Syria deserves reinstatement, a U.S. Department of State spokesperson told BBC News.

The U.K., for its part, said it was remaining “opposed to engagement with the Assad regime,” U.K. Minister of State Foreign Commonwealth & Development Affairs Lord Ahmad told BBC News, given that Assad continues to “detain, torture and kill innocent Syrians.”

Relations had already been heading toward normalization, but the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey in February sped up the process.

With News Wire Services