Arab foreign ministers decided on Sunday, May 7, in Cairo, Egypt, to reintegrate the Syrian regime into the Arab League after having dismissed it in 2011 for the suppression of a popular uprising that degenerated into a bloody war.

Syria had been suspended in response to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on opponents after the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. China and Russia blocked attempts to sanction Assad in the Council United Nations security forces, inciting the United States and the European Union to impose unilateral restrictions against him, his government and his supporters.

“The delegations of the government of the Arab Republic of Syria will again sit in the Arab League”, explains the text voted by all the ministers, in a meeting behind closed doors, at the headquarters of the Arab League, in Cairo.

Diplomatically isolated since 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad recently emerged from his persona non grata status, and some observers believe he could even attend the annual summit of leaders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 19. State of the Pan-Arab organization. Created more than eighty years ago, the Arab League wields little political weight on the world stage, but the measure has a symbolic dimension.

It is also a dramatic reversal, given that in 2013 the anti-Assad opposition was able to occupy Syria’s seat at an Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar.

Normalization of relations

Arab countries had supported rebels at the start of the war, which has since become a battlefield between foreign forces, and which has left around half a million dead and millions of refugees and displaced.

Several states, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have recently reconnected with Syria, although some, such as Qatar, remain opposed to full normalization without a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

While the diplomatic warming had been brewing for months, Mr. Assad benefited from the surge of global solidarity after the devastating February 6 earthquake that left thousands dead in Turkey and Syria.

The president and his ministers have thus seen the representatives of many Arab countries march through Damascus, which had hitherto refused to normalize their relations with Syria – some even making their departure from power a condition sine qua non.

Damascus is now betting on full normalization with Arab countries, in particular the wealthy Gulf monarchies – once the greatest allies of the opposition to Mr. Assad – to finance the costly reconstruction of the country with infrastructure ravaged by repeated conflicts.