After more than ten years of isolation due to the turmoil in Syria, a delegation of leading Arab lawmakers met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday in Damascus. This meeting was another indication of thawing relations.
As part of a mission from the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union, lawmakers from Oman and Lebanon, as well as the heads of the houses of representatives in Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Libya, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, visited Syria.
According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, they met with Syrian parliamentarians as well as Assad.
Syria was largely isolated from the rest of the Arab world following Assad’s deadly crackdown against protests that erupted against his rule in 2011.
The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in 2011 and many Arab countries pulled their envoys out of Damascus.
Assad, on the other hand, has benefited from an outpouring of Arab support in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake on Feb. 6, which killed more than 5,900 people across Syria, according to a tally of U.N. and Syrian government figures.
Donors have included Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which supported rebels seeking to depose Assad in Syria’s early years of conflict.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi spoke with Assad by phone for the first time on Feb. 7th and Jordan’s foreign minister made his first trip to Damascus on Feb. 15th.
Assad then traveled to Oman on Feb. 20th – the first time he left Syria since the quake.
He had rarely left Syria during the war, travelling only to close allies Russia and Iran whose military support helped him turn the tide of the conflict.
Assad’s 2022 visit to the UAE was his first trip to an Arab state since the 2011.
